NFL ratings down again in 2017

[NoBowles]

2 minutes ago, kelticwizard said:

To repeat:  Last year in 2016, Kaepernick and only a handful of other players knelt during the anthem.  It did not receive much attention in the press, it was largely a nonissue.   This season, the number of players kneeling during the anthem increased many times over, and the media attention to it has also drastically intemsified.  The president was dwelling on it during speeches.  Yet league viewership decreased only slightly more than last year.

 

If the decline in viewership was driven by the kneeling, then the viewership drop this year should be approaching 40%, not 9%. 

Again, I don’t know where you were last year, but your wrong. Kneeling is not the only thing, but it’s a big contributor 

[kelticwizard]

Why do you repeat that lame excuse?  Question:  Was the kneeling thing a much bigger issue this year than last year, or not?  

[paulyjet]

Don't care. It's football.  I love it.

[kelticwizard]

20 minutes ago, NoBowles said:

Again, I don’t know where you were last year, but your wrong. Kneeling is not the only thing, but it’s a big contributor 

Sept 1, 2016:  Only people kneeling for 49ers were Kaepernick and Eric Reid.

 

Oct 1, 2017:  Here is a pic of the 49ers during the anthem. 30 players kneeling.   Huge difference.

 

[dcJet]

Kneeling's a very small percentage.  Some guys that say they're boycotting seem to know a lot about how the game turned out.  

Its the cable cutters.  TV viewership is down across the board for all shows, not just the NFL.  

 

[dcJet]

The refs need to stop calling so many ticky-tak fouls.   Gruden says a pass interference call should be so obvious that it calls itself.  It should be the same thing with all penalties.  

[Jet9]

5 hours ago, kelticwizard said:

There was no kneeling issue last year when the NFL lost 7% of their viewership. So the kneeling is nowhere near the core of the problem.

Core? No, probably not. More like the icing on the cake. 

[RutgersJetFan]

[Jet Nut]

9 hours ago, SayNoToDMC said:

I can't wait to see the numbers after Rodgers big new contract is up. 

If you stop watching football because of the Commissioners contract you weren't a fan in the first place.

[T0mShane]

6 hours ago, dcJet said:

Kneeling's a very small percentage.  Some guys that say they're boycotting seem to know a lot about how the game turned out.  

Its the cable cutters.  TV viewership is down across the board for all shows, not just the NFL.  

 

Was watching the game in a bar a few weeks back and this Dale Earnhardt looking dude was sitting a few seats down, pounding away at his phone and glaring at an iPad. Overheard him telling the bartender that he REFUSES to watch at home bc of the kneeling, but was in four(!) fantasy leagues and was doing Draft Kings on the tablet. lol

[nyjunc]

game we love is dying a slow death from the war on football w/ CTE and the dangers of the game to the political nonsense.  These next 5-10 years will be critical for this game or else we will become a soft soccer nation as we continue our transition into becoming like European countries.

[NoBowles]

10 hours ago, kelticwizard said:

Sept 1, 2016:  Only people kneeling for 49ers were Kaepernick and Eric Reid.

 

Oct 1, 2017:  Here is a pic of the 49ers during the anthem. 30 players kneeling.   Huge difference.

 

Great, you have proved that more people are kneeling this year than last year after our nimrod president opened his big mouth. It still does not contradict what I said earlier, there absolutely was protesting going on last year, and it absolutely was turning off fans. Hell, there were weekly reports last year of which players on which teams were kneeling. Lets not act like it was an isolated incident with just the 49ers last year.

[rex-n-effect]

People talking about the supposed effect of the kneeling are trying to explain a broad effect on the back of their personal feelings and anecdotes while discounting broad evidence that contradicts their opinion. I know, it's 2018 and that's considered acceptable but it's not true.

The problem is that the games are just not interesting to watch. This is due to a lot of factors about the games: over-saturation of games; excessive penalties; delayed reviews; vague rules about catches and TDs; seemingly shifting rules in favor of certain teams; excessive commercials. You can add in other factors like cord cutting, CTE concerns, a shift away in younger adults from watching sports.

Another factor is that the NFL has very few really competitive teams and they are mostly the same teams for the past 10-15 years. Few people want to sit and watch all the games when most of the teams are boring to watch in the midst of boring, slow games. People will watch their team and maybe the more competitive games. Otherwise they'll just watch the highlights. There's no good reason to watch two 4-12 teams for two hours play run-run-pass-punt mixed with an hour of commercials.

[Jetster]

1 hour ago, rex-n-effect said:

People talking about the supposed effect of the kneeling are trying to explain a broad effect on the back of their personal feelings and anecdotes while discounting broad evidence that contradicts their opinion. I know, it's 2018 and that's considered acceptable but it's not true.

The problem is that the games are just not interesting to watch. This is due to a lot of factors about the games: over-saturation of games; excessive penalties; delayed reviews; vague rules about catches and TDs; seemingly shifting rules in favor of certain teams; excessive commercials. You can add in other factors like cord cutting, CTE concerns, a shift away in younger adults from watching sports.

Another factor is that the NFL has very few really competitive teams and they are mostly the same teams for the past 10-15 years. Few people want to sit and watch all the games when most of the teams are boring to watch in the midst of boring, slow games. People will watch their team and maybe the more competitive games. Otherwise they'll just watch the highlights. There's no good reason to watch two 4-12 teams for two hours play run-run-pass-punt mixed with an hour of commercials.

Jets outside of maybe 3/4 games out of 16 are so f*cking boring its PAINFUL. Sit back and think for a moment that your an NFL fan and the only game on TV was Jets vs Broncos, or Jets vs Pats. I believe the Jets offense was 2- 26 on 3rd down conversions, lmao! 

Like having hot pokers stuck into your corneas.

[NoBowles]

5 hours ago, T0mShane said:

Was watching the game in a bar a few weeks back and this Dale Earnhardt looking dude was sitting a few seats down, pounding away at his phone and glaring at an iPad. Overheard him telling the bartender that he REFUSES to watch at home bc of the kneeling, but was in four(!) fantasy leagues and was doing Draft Kings on the tablet. lol

I don't believe for one second that anyone who looks like Dale Earnhardt knows how to use an iPad. I think this story is made up

[Rangers9]

I think there's a lot that goes into this. First just a small part of this is the national anthem issue. Imo it's a long term trend of losing interest in the NFL. Anything that's super popular has a high point and eventually people change and interest goes down. But there might be tangible reasons. One might be seat licenses charging consumers extra money to buy tickets. Many long time season ticket holders resisted and dropped their subscriptions. Years ago you had to be on a long time list to buy season tickets and now it's pretty easy to buy NFL tickets and at a discounted price. Also charging fans regular prices for pre-season games. Overexposure on TV. Bad behavior by some players like Ray Rice. Knocking his wife out cold on a video does not win over fans. Holding up municipalities to build billion dollar stadiums at some tax payer expense is another. And if like in San Diego they won't finance it moving out. After 50 years in that city. And brain injuries. People are losing interest in football due to this. I'm not so sure buying an NFL team long term is a good investment. 

[SayNoToDMC]

10 hours ago, Jet Nut said:

If you stop watching football because of the Commissioners contract you weren't a fan in the first place.

You can put together a pretty lengthy list of reasons why people are watching less football. He's the guy overseeing it all for 40 million a year. I'd say if you don't think football is worse now than 15-20 years ago you're the crap fan or just really love fantasy football.

[nyjunc]

1 hour ago, SayNoToDMC said:

You can put together a pretty lengthy list of reasons why people are watching less football. He's the guy overseeing it all for 40 million a year. I'd say if you don't think football is worse now than 15-20 years ago you're the crap fan or just really love fantasy football.

You act like Goodell has a choice.  Once former players that were fully aware how dangerous the game was that they were playing started SUING the NFL b/c they mishandled their money the game had to change. 

Think about even 10 years ago when a guy would get his "bell rung", he may miss a play, they may give him smelling salts but he'd be right back in.  That player clearly had a concussion.  Now that player may be out for weeks but they are protecting the brains of players not b/c they are good people but b/c of lawsuits which would mean the league losing more money down the road.  They have just done what they have had to do.

[JohnnyLV]

Anyone who believes the kneeling thing is anything more than a drop in the bucket of the lost ratings is an idiot, sorry.

NFL ratings are declining because the product is not as compelling as it was:

1. Games are decided more by officials than the players on the field.

2. All the ridiculous reviews ruin the flow of the game and create the "micro pause" which ruins the excitement of the game and makes them too long.

3. Oversaturation has led to games not really being viewed as special or events any longer on the night games

4. Overemphasis and a bias towards the elite teams especially in penalty calling.

Solution:

1. Change the rules, especially for a catch and fumbling "through the endzone". Enforce the uncatchable portion of a PI call. Only call blatant defensive PI calls.

2. Remove the automatic review of all scoring plays. If it's controversial let them throw a challenge flag

3. Remove automatic review of turnovers. If it's controversial let me throw a challenge flag

4.To compensate add 2 challenges: allow 2 challenges per half per team. No extras for getting it right. Will dramatically reduce the number of reviews in a game overall. Limit the total time allowed for a challenge. Possibly limit reviews to full speed video. HD video and super slow mo are showing minute things that are not visible to the naked eye 

5. Add an additional bye week and extend the season to 18 weeks of games. An extra week of TV revenue offsets having less commercials in game.

6. Reduce the number of Thursday games to around 10, plus the opener, and give all teams that play on Thursday one of their 2 byes before the Thursday game.

7. Kick off only at the start of each half. Teams can elect to on-side kick in the 4th quarter. Otherwise, give the ball at the 25 after scores.

8. Eliminate the kick off commercial break and limit commercial breaks especially in the 4th quarter. Use split screen ads in 4th quarter TOsto keep the flow of the game going.

 

 

 

 

 

[Jet Nut]

2 hours ago, SayNoToDMC said:

You can put together a pretty lengthy list of reasons why people are watching less football. He's the guy overseeing it all for 40 million a year. I'd say if you don't think football is worse now than 15-20 years ago you're the crap fan or just really love fantasy football.

I think it's over saturated.  MNF isn't an event now, it's another football game.  Football can fix that along with the replay issues.  Other than that the game makes a lot more money for owners and players than it did 15-20 years ago so it's not all worse.  

[Hitman Harris]

No mention in the article of refs rigging the games huh? 

Morons. Or pure denial who knows. doesn't matter. 

It's the refs and the commercials.