The NFL's ratings crisis

I almost wonder if the Thursday games were the bridge too far. There is something to be said for building up into the weekend. Granted most of these Thursday games are missable - but you miss one NFL game, missing two doesn't seem that big of a deal. Life goes on.

 

I think Monday Night Football not getting the best matchups knocked things down a peg too. There are still some decent to semi-decent matchups you'd maybe watch if it was late Sunday afternoon and you were already in the flow. But getting emotionally cranked back up a day later for Giants-Lions? Meh.

 

The move to Thursday has been no different than a city's great restaurant that expands into a suburban location but fills it with the original owner's shithead son who never works as hard as the old man who built the brand.

The steak just isn't as good. The service is worse. The ambience is flat.

Yet enough people who don't like the suburban location can find the brand damaged enough where they don't go downtown as often.

 

My little two cents: on the season thread, people were reminiscing about a meaningless game from 1972 because the quarterbacks in it put on an offensive shown unknown at the time. It was exciting and MEMORABLE.

That is the difference. In its onslaught to create excitement, the NFL has lost the ability to make regular season games memorable. Too much scoring, games spread over three nights, around the clock coverage...they've made the game just not that interesting. Now, we have had about a dozen great Super Bowls in the past 15 years...that is amazing, but also hurts the regular season. The final game of late has been the best game of the year, so why watch a Browns-Bills game?

 

I agree with much of what cyclingwriter wrote.

But part of the reason we SJ.comers like 1970s and 80s NFL highlights is ... we were younger then. Yes, NFL Sunday games were some of the only sports available, but they were also events because we were kids (or younger people) who were much more into sports in general and our team in particular. You lose some of that when you get older.

For the purpose of discussing NFL ratings, it's more useful to see how our kids and their friends follow the sport and watch the games. Many of the differences in how they watch are due to technology and have been mentioned here. Among my sports-loving 18-year-old and his friends, the NBA ranks higher than the NFL by a long shot — and my son and many of his friends are football players.

 

Way too much dead time during these games. Even with trying fewer commercials between PATs. It's way too easy to just grab a tablet or turn on Netflix or whatever in the time between drives. Every game feels like giant repetitive commercials for that weeks bad network comedy. The presentation needs am overhaul to hold shortening attention spans.

 

The commissioner makes $40 million a year. He must be a smart guy to command that kind of salary. I'm sure he can figure out how to solve any issues they have.

 

I kind of agree with Poin's post from a page or two ago - The NFL is still the unquestionable sports juggernaut when it comes to ratings, the money it commands from advertisers and networks, and how much of the public's attention it gets. Even if it's slipping, it's still a fuck-ton a lot.

However, even around, say, five years ago, it seemed like the NFL was an unkillable golden goose - hence why they were doing things like adding Thursday night games, playing Saturday games, etc. Since there is a combination of factors hurting ratings and revenues at the same time - saturation, concussions, Kaepernick, the general decline of broadcast networks - it's probably hard to isolate them and see how much of an effect each has. And I'd imagine things are going to get worse, as more stuff comes out about CTE, and there is a labor issue looming, and Goodell doesn't seem popular enough or competent enough to guide the league through the issues.

 

My 19 year old son is the same -- obsessive about the NBA, utterly indifferent to the NFL. His friends too.

 

It is hard to assess how others in my children's age bracket (late 20s-early 30s) think about the NFL in general here in Boston because almost two decades of unbroken success means that the Patriots have had a local bandwagon effect that means pretty much everybody is at least a casual follower of the team.

 

My son is 8 and he loves football at all levels, much more than basketball. Sounds like he's an anomaly, though.

 

My son will never be interested in football, but my daughter can be had. I will convince her that it's better than Paw Patrol.