There have been many, and I mean MANY, articles out recently trying to explain the NFL ratings decline. For the most part, I’ve heard about them from Twitter and from comments here. Once I get to the article, I skim it to see what the author’s underlying reason is. Then, once I’ve decided whether I agree with the premise or not, I move on with my day.
One person I rarely do that with is Spencer Hall. He is one of my favorite writers and he always has good insights. Yesterday, he published his inevitable take on the issue which, as usual, was insightful and different from everyone else’s. I highly recommend that everyone click the link and read the article. It’s ok, I’ll wait. I’ve got something to keep me busy while you read.
Now, Spencer’s main points (to paraphrase him) are:
The quantity, variety, and method of delivery of entertainment content are different now.
This has helped to mold our consumption of content to a vastly different way than it used to be.
I think he’s absolutely right and that his explanation not only explains the NFL’s ratings decline, but the drastic changes that have rocked the newspaper industry, the magazine business, the recording industry, the porn industry, and the television network model. None of the old ways work for all of those businesses and it’s all tied to what Spencer is talking about.
In his article, Spencer points out how the NBA has been able to adapt to this new reality and has embraced social media. He writes, “You want people to know what’s happening in the NBA even if they aren’t a fan because that kind of transcendent cultural relevance gets you the things leagues and their players blossom under: huge TV contracts, endorsements, and the continued giddy partnership with corporate America’s advertising dollars.”
The NBA doesn’t care if you watch every game and doesn’t expect you to. As long as you stay in the know and as long as the NBA has some kind of relevance, players can get endorsement deals, teams can sell tickets and merchandise, and networks will feel obliged to pay money for rights fees. Not because the games will attract great ratings but rather because they want to be seen as affiliated with something culturally important. It helps them to stay relevant too and God knows they need that.
So, what’s the point, Balls? Why are you regurgitating Spencer’s article? I’m getting to that.
In my opening paragraph, I talked about how I consume content that is relevant to my interests. You all, dear readers, since you are on the Internet reading this, do the same thing. It doesn’t matter if you are a millennial or a forty-something pervert, things have changed and everyone has adapted. The NFL has not and will not, which is why it is dying.
The NFL brand is shit. Roger Goodell is a National Disgrace. Greedy owners fuck over fans and turn blind eyes to heinous people that commit horrible acts just because they can help their teams win games. To say nothing of how they treat players both past and present and the way they are too cheap to pay cheerleaders a decent wage and to have full-time younger and in-shape referees so that the increasingly-confusing rule book can be enforced correctly and consistently.
Football, on the other hand, is innocent in all of this. The game survives because, at its core and at its best, it’s the best sport we have invented. It has survived the NCAA and the NFL, two of the most heinous and evil organizations this side of FIFA, and it will outlive them both.
If the NFL really wants to survive this, they should follow the NBA and, if I may show my slight bias, the Australian Football League. The AFL gets it right in so many ways but the key one is their use of social media and the platforms they use to promote the league. I mean, I, an American born in Mexico, have been able to write weekly posts on their league based on the content they provide. This has resulted in new fans, at least one new international club membership, and some merchandise being purchased from across the world.
From what I’ve read, they are more aggressive in their home country at building fan interest in the league. This has resulted in new higher dollar media contracts. In case you didn’t click through, that deal includes mobile platforms plus multiple platforms (free, mobile, and pay tv) for all games. That means you can watch the same game in more than one platform from more than one source. Imagine CBS, the NFL Network, and Twitter all showing the same game except each has a different broadcast team and a different style of showing the game. Now, imagine that option for EVERY game.
That’s the present in Australia and the future for us and the rest of the world. Ratings are irrelevant now. Revenue will not come from TV ratings. It will come from cultural relevance. Football will always have that, but, if the NFL continues to provide a shit product and piss off the people that love the game, the NFL will die. As it is, it’s only alive because Donald Trump fucked the USFL over as it was trying to be a serious competitor to the NFL. If someone can come along, take advantage of the USFL’s anti-trust win over the NFL, and provide a quality football league that fixes all of the NFL’s problems, you’re telling me people wouldn’t watch and players wouldn’t go play there instead?
The existing TV contracts for the NFL expire in 2023. The CBA expires in 2021. The NFL has 5 years to get its shit together. If it is depending on the old system and ratings to get another big chunk of money, they’re in for a big bad surprise.
Hey, Elon Musk! Fuck Mars and come save football!
Artist’s portrayal of the future of the NFL and Mars colonists:
And ultimately, I think elite football has a problem: the way the game has been structured, you need a top-tier QB to be competitive. And there aren’t enough top-tier QBs out there for more than a few teams to be competitive. And if your top-tier QB gets injured, you’re pretty much fucked.
(Yes, there are exceptions to the QB rule, but those exceptions prove the rule–it takes an insane defense, a once-in-a-generation coach, or a fluke of chance for teams without (uninjured) elite QBs to compete.)
So people get burned out, especially when their QB heroes have feet of clay. Manning declined precipitously (and probably harassed and then did worse to that trainer), Brady cheated, Ben raped, etc. And fanbases for teams that don’t have elite QBs go into hibernation: “Just wait ’til we get a good QB!” And if the team shows no ability over the short- or long-term to get an elite QB, those fanbases stay in hibernation.
We see fantastic talents like Calvin Johnson spend his career on a mediocre team, and he retires having no postseason accolades to match his talent. We see teams build and build and get good, but they can never get over the hump because they can’t solve the QB riddle. People are getting burned out on football because there’s no long-term narrative. The same teams are good, not necessarily because they have a Theo Epstein building them, but because they have good QBs and they put the right pieces in place around those QBs. And bad teams stay bad, because they can’t get a good QB. I mean, look at the Bears. Everyone who hates Catler wants him gone, but the reality is that the Bears aren’t going to be able to get anyone better.
Football feels rigged. It feels like it’s been packaged. I think back to my youth when the Bears were mauling other teams, and I think, “Oh, that’s how it should be. A backup QB and a ferocious defense can easily win and get into the playoffs.” And then I realize that the ferocious defense I loved left guys literally crippled in their 40s.
Back when football was “better,” we didn’t see the fallout from how it worked. Players came and went, and we never saw the consequences. Now, when we see head-to-head hits, we (rightly) understand that a guy is getting damaged permanently by that hit.
I think we’re finally coming around that football is destructive. And neither we–nor the NFL–has figured out a way to keep loving the game, and keep the game worthy of our love.
(Ultimately, like Sill and I have riffed on, I think the game has to get rid of most of its contact, so it’s not such a bloodsport. Only when players aren’t so susceptible to life-changing injuries will we be able to re-establish a guilt-free connection to it as a media spectacle.)
Late to the party, but I just wanted to comment on a couple points.
1) Never thought of it, but having multiple options to watch the same game would be paradigm-breaking, and pretty cool. It would be really fun to have actual access to something like the All-22 camera during the game. Or a broadcast that had minimal commentary.
2) I’m not sure that’s what’s leading to the decline. Sure, people are (getting) used to on-demand programming and being able to watch what they way, how they want, when they want, and sports programming has a hard time jibing with those wants. But I think the simpler explanation is probably right: the NFL has shitted up the product over the past few years, with players behaving badly off the field, with Byzantine rules changes (the PAT change is just fucking stupid) and impenetrable interpretations and inconsistent applications of those rules, and then the fact that a couple injuries to key players can turn contenders into basement-dwellers… and it seems like the injury bug is biting teams harder and more often. All this goes together to make the product less appealing, less compelling.
Add into it FF has passed its peak*, and the casual fan that was getting into watching games for other reasons is starting to tune out.
Here’s the test of what’s to blame: Are NCAA football ratings down, and if so, to the same degree as NFL? I don’t think so. So the problem isn’t with the sport or with how it is televised. It’s something in the organization and the narrative of the games/teams/league. I’m not saying the NCAA is good. I’m saying the NFL is rotten, and the casual fan can no longer hold his/her nose.
*The NFL can blame itself for this. If the league hadn’t sold its soul to FanKings/DraftDuel for big cash, maybe FF wouldn’t have peaked so soon.
Well, they’ve got it too…
http://xgames.espn.com/xgames/ncf/article/15284031/cfp-officials-believe-several-factors-tv-ratings-decline
This is good stuff, but fuck Elon Musk
http://img.pandawhale.com/post-37129-yeah-well-you-know-thats-just-kdBj.gif
But you can totally get football on your phone now! That’s enough for cultural relevancy, right?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtuGXO6d4l8&w=640&h=360%5D
Lookit those crazy kids with their hippity hop music and their emojis!
The next two weeks will prove or disprove the NFL argument about the election and baseball affecting the ratings.
It was pretty cool that the World Series destroyed Sunday Night Football last week.
Now we’ll see if the ratings get some bounce back.
Well, the next two weeks of Color Rush seem to scheduled with the intention of turning off any remaining fans.
11/10 – Browns at Ravens
11/17 – Saints at Panthers
I am also deeply disturbed that GOOGLE-BINGING “the horror” results in a BAZINGA image before this one. That is the true horror.
THESE NEXT TWO THURSDAYS I CALL A DUKE ELLINGTON SYMPHONIC WORK BECAUSE THEY’LL BE FULL OF BLACK, BROWN, AND BEIGE.
I think it is interesting to consider but, as a consumer, I don’t care. I have no financial investment in the NFL or its ‘partner’ organizations. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good NFL product. I like the off-field storylines (which makes up about 75% of our talk around here), the weight each game carries, and the displays of athleticism and coordination that go with each play. But it’s also another entertainment product that I can easily walk away from when something better is made available. You nailed it with the NBA — I haven’t seen more than 20 minutes of non elimination game NBA basketball in 4 years. I still know who sucks. I know who is good. I know the storylines (Wade back to CHI; PHI tanking ‘working’; Durant move; the new CBA allowing scrubs to get huge deals) and I don’t really feel all that much less out place sitting down with die-hard basketball friends to watch a game as I do other NFL fans.
I know we’ve beaten the long games/no action thing into the ground but it’s a huge deal. I think the line used to be that only the die-hards will brave 6 hours of their life for the ‘game day experience’. Now, it feels like as much of an investment to give up half my afternoon to just watch the game at home because the whole fucking thing is made available in a summary on google that night. I don’t even need to see the actual game to be included in the cultural aspects of the NFL (fantasy football, gambling, discussing highlights at the water cooler).
Besides, I don’t know if you’ve been following the recent trend but, just in the last 24 hours, MLB has made a Pokemon Go-esque move to capture the TV audience. Surely they will overtake the NFL by Christmas.
But to offer a minor point of dissent…FUCK the NBA.
Why in fuck are we trying to get to Mars? That planet almost killed Matt Damon. A mere mortal doesn’t stand a chance, certainly not Ben Afleck.
I think they left out some parts of Damon’s tribulations on Mars*. For one thing, he never ran into this guy:
https://media.tenor.co/images/45d62eafb0391c6ca1e81598d8a9a5e7/raw
*It’s a documentary, right?
I’m impressed you were able to turn this article around so quickly after your cameo appearance in the World Series.
THIS NEW TREND, I CALL IT A HIGH CLASS HOOKER, BECAUSE IT’S FUCKING RICH OLD MEN, TAKING THEIR MONEY, AND THEN LEAVING THEM BEHIND
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/me3.gif
A cogent, well-reasoned analysis. Or, as Roger Goodell would say,
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IfjAatRIBcc/UReMTLu617I/AAAAAAAAJ4c/YHm1iAorF00/s1600/Senor-Chang.gif
This is good stuff and all right on the nose. Their inability to adapt to the changing technology and culture around watching sports is exacerbated by all of the other horrible bullshit.
We must bring in JJ Abrams to negotiate the next CBA and television rights deals!
http://static4.thisisinsider.com/image/57da18358f89f51d008b483e-902/jj-abrams-south-park.png