Update
Miami Dolphins fans mercilessly booed San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick Sunday afternoon in Miami… Kaepernick has been in the news recently after a tense exchange over the merits of recently deceased Cuban dictator Fidel Castro with a local Florida reporter. Miami, which has a large Cuban population, didn’t let Kaepernick forget about it.
November 1, 2016
Here is more from CBS News in Boston. The latest is now an 18% drop in the viewership of Monday Night Football.
The actual games and the broadcasts also have lost appeal. The endless penalty flags and commercials have also turned off viewers, as has the actual competition… Whether it’s the coverage of undesirable topics or the actual play on the field, the NFL has become significantly less watchable.
I tend to agree that watching the actual games is less exciting than it used to be. There are just way too many commercials and timeouts. Most recently, I recorded a 4.5 hour Bengals game (I only watched about 15 minutes) to see it end in a tie. Think of it — it’s consuming more than 250 minutes of your life and you’re watching only about 30 minutes of actual tackling and running.
October 29, 2016
… the downbeat goes on. Fom CBS News in Boston:
A fresh poll from Seton Hall surveyed 841 adults across the U.S. Each respondent was asked to identify seven separate factors as a reason for the NFL ratings drop, allowing them to answer “yes” or “no” for each of them. The leading factor, according to the poll, was the national anthem protests, which scored “yes” at a rate of 56 percent.
…
The NFL has long been one of the country’s most popular forms of escapist entertainment, and the injection of social and political issues into the broadcasts has turned a number of fans away. It may not be the only cause for the NFL’s ratings decline, but it may be a bigger factor than you think.
October 20, 2016
In a survey of 1,136 Americans who identified themselves as NFL fans, 29 percent said they are watching fewer NFL games for the following reasons:
- Protests by Colin Kaepernick and others
- Lack of opportunity to watch the NFL
- Lost interest in the NFL
- Presidential election
October 16, 2016
Here is the latest on TV viewing of NFL games. It’s hard to say if any of this is a result of player protests…
Maybe it was the Los Angeles Dodgers-Chicago Cubs Game 2 of the National League Championship Series, or The Walking Dead retrospective special ahead of next week’s Season 7 debut. Or maybe it was just NFL exhaustion after the Dallas Cowboys crushed the Green Bay Packers 30-16 earlier in the day, or maybe blame The Simpsons’ annual ‘Treehouse Of Horror’ episode. Whatever it was, Sunday Night Football and NBC had a real problem last night, and it wasn’t Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
According to USA Today, Mr. Kaepernick was loudly booed at the start of the game on Sunday:
Colin Kaepernick was roundly booed by the Buffalo crowd before he took the field for his return as the 49ers starter.
October 8, 2016
From the NASDAQ news site comes this report:
“The National Football League has sent a memo to team owners seeking to ease concerns about the ratings decline that has hit football this fall. Through the first four weeks of the season, NFL viewership has declined 11%, and among the crucial adults 18-49 demographic that advertisers covet, ratings are down 12%.
…
As for a potential backlash by some viewers angered at players not standing for the national anthem to protest of police brutality, the NFL said it sees no evidence to that being a factor in declining ratings: ‘In fact, our own data shows that the perception of the NFL and its players is actually up in 2016.'”
October 4, 2016
A new article in the Washington Examiner notes that the protests are having an impact on viewers:
“The growing number of player protests at National Football League games, driven by the Black Lives Matter movement and San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick, has prompted nearly a third of Americans to turn the games off, according to a new survey.
Rasmussen Reports revealed Tuesday that 32 percent of American adults say they are “less likely” to watch a game because of the expanding protests over how blacks are treated, especially by police.”
September 26, 2016
It appears that more people are getting fed-up with these player “demonstrations”:
“After spending a week at work, hearing about the liberalism being forced on their kids at school, having liberalism shoved in their face by their local newspaper and being harangued by TV shows portraying people like them as creeps, a lot of conservative men like to relax by watching sports. Sports is a place where politics shouldn’t even be on the agenda….but IT IS.”
…
“Forget about rushing for 100 yards and throwing 4 touchdowns in a game; if you really want people to talk about you, just tell everyone about how racist America is and how awful the police are…”
September 23, 2016
From famous basketball coach Bobby Knight, his comments on Kaepernick:
“Were I a teammate, were I the coach, were I the owner, in a situation like that, I’d have gotten rid of the guy… It’s hard for me to imagine anybody that can fault the opportunities one has in this country. No country in the world provides better opportunities for people that are willing to work, willing to sacrifice and I would’ve had a very difficult time playing with a guy like that, coaching a guy like that, or having him as a teammate.”
September 21, 2016
According to a recent study, there is a supposed drop in viewership of NFL games at this point in the season:
The Eagles-Bears ratings declined by double digits from last year’s Week Two Monday Night Football contest and represents the lowest number since the franchise moved from ABC to ESPN. The NFL experienced drops, albeit smaller ones, for the Sunday slate, too.
September 19, 2016
With these ridiculous positions that they are taking about sports and politics, it appears that the NFL is running scared:
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says the league will encourage players to use their voice to promote social change as the demonstrations during the national anthem…
Source: Roger Goodell praises player demonstrations for going from ‘protests to progress’
What social change is Mr. Goodell seeking and expecting? More public funding for stadiums? How about introducing socialism into the NFL? The players and fans should be the owners of the team.
I can’t imagine this support of player’s ‘protesting’ working out for the benefit of the league in the long run. It leaves a bad taste for the majority of the fans who don’t want to hear about politics with their sports. I don’t know about others, but I watch for the purity of the game –teamwork, effort, hitting, etc. Frankly, I don’t care for the commercials, halftime shows, etc. They’re not going to force me to ingest their extraneous crap. In fact, I don’t watch football live on TV anymore. I prefer the edited version where I can watch all the essential plays of the sport/game in under 30 minutes.
This focus on egotism and victimization by overpaid athletes is not very endearing to the people paying for all of it.
September 17, 2016
It makes you wonder. The NFL fines a player for excessive celebration after scoring a touchdown, yet maintains that players have constitutional rights to ignore the national anthem. Does anyone else see any hypocrisy here? Does this just reflect the NFL’s fear of ‘racism-to-explain-everything hate-mongers’?
September 15, 2016
Some early feedback:
Football fans have reacted to the constant player protests and national anthem controversies in a way that the NFL simply can’t miss: They’re not watching.
Source: NFL Players Protest Anthem; Fan Reaction STUNS The League