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“NFL TV Ratings-Why Are They Down?”

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We’re headed to the midway point of the NFL season, starting with the Thursday night football game.

The NFL is headed for a season of failing TV ratings, virtually across the board.

Is there a real reason? Is there a cause? What can be done about it?

NFL network TV ratings are down 7.5% for the first half of the season far.

Of the 32-cities in the NFL, television numbers for the home teams are down in 26-sof those cities.

Here close to home, the Chargers have posted some of the worst TV numbers ever for a ‘home market game’, not just in meaningless preseason, but now in regular season.

Their games have been the 5th most watched game in the LA market of the 5-games showed on a Sunday in the market.

Why, what has happened.

Quality of play has to be in play in all this.

There is a lot of bad football being played.

For example last week, the Chicago Bears completed 4-passes in their game with Carolina. The Bengals Pro Bowl quarterback had 44-yards passing in the first half of his game. Eli Manning and the Giants had 47-yards in offense in the fist half of their game. Minnesota needed 6-field goals to win. The Steelers had to have 5-field goals.

The quality of the game seems to be at an all time low. I think it is a huge factor.

Add in the injury factor to quarterbacks and star players. Mix in some flashback over the whole national anthem issue. Don’t think it has much to do with the on going concussion incident.

But the real reason, over saturation.

Games on Thursday, and not many great matches because there are not a lot of great teams.

Then the early games from London which seem to be audience killers.

The doubleheaders in the two big Sunday afternoon network windows, have more lousy matches than must watch games.

By Sunday night, there’s not always a great game there. And Monday, which used to e special, now seems to drag us to watch some bad outings too, Colts-Bucs etc.

Not often discussed is the proliferation of different ways to get games on technologies, apps, streaming etc, all which seem to drain viewers away.

And of course, on any given Saturday in San Diego, there could ge 20-collegege football games to view, because everybody seems to have a conference TV package, and there are so many networks that need games to fill.

Sorry for every Penn State-Ohio State game, we also get our fill of Bowling Green-vs-Marshall.

The NFL cant have everything. Revenue from all the networks, and the ancillary revenue from all these streaming partners. The prices will likely fall because the ratings have.

Now it’s caught up to them. TV ratings dropping, which means revenue will drop, though they are getting the sidebar revenue from other places.

And now the NFL has to fight off the image, they are squeezing every dollar out of everything they do from the paying public.

And yes, attendance is falling too in a chunk of these NFL cities.

Lots of things to think about.

Greed is not always good, in the long term. The NFL is about to find that out.

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