Everyone Is Freaking Out About The NFL's Cratering Ratings
There’s a lot going on here and everyone is collectively freaking out because the NFL’s ratings are no longer ascending like unmanned rocket strapped to two Red Bull boosters. In fact, they’re down. A lot in some cases. Part of the problem is that TV viewership is declining. There is now a measurable number of people at the younger end of the 25-54 demo whose viewing habits are changing. So part of it is not an NFL problem– it’s a TV and cable problem. For example, I watched the Cubs-Dodgers game on TV on Sunday night and streamed the football game – a truly horrific matchup between two bastard teams whose coaches should have already been fired – on my iPad. That use case surely isn’t accounted for in the Nielsen ratings.
At 33, I’m probably right on the cusp of traditional viewership and millennial viewership. My habit is still sitting around a TV to watch a big game and I feel off when I have to watch a major live event on a mobile device, but I’m guessing someone who’s 27 is a bit more used to it and doesn’t have the same problem tuning in on a smaller screen. Those types of viewers will only continue to increase in the meaningful demo. Jim said he and his two roommates have one TV, in their living room, and that he doesn’t know many single people living with roommates or cats who have TVs in their bedrooms. When I lived with a roommate 7-8 years ago, I most certainly had a TV in my bedroom, and most certainly did not have a cat in any room, because the concept of streaming anything in a reliable way basically didn’t exist yet, and because cats suck.
Which brings us to the other problem– the NFL itself. Its stubborn social media policy is regressing. The mandate that NFL teams not post video highlights on Twitter is absurd. And when the league itself posts highlights, they use some proprietary Twitter video player that won’t allow the actual video to be embedded anywhere. Watch– click play and see what happens:
.@Revis24 vs. @LarryFitzgerald
Week 6 Highlights👇 #NYJvsAZ https://t.co/onmRUNr3tp
— NFL (@NFL) October 18, 2016
Earlier I was going to post a clip of German announcers calling Carson Wentz’s 54-yard pass to Jordan Matthews. It is almost the definition of a viral post that would in no way impact actual viewership. I saw it and thought it would make for a fun (easy) post. Not embeddable. WHY? How on Earth would it harm the NFL for that video to show up on a blog with a lot of readers (especially when you consider that they could play an ad before it)? It’s three days after the game, no one will be thinking, “NEIN, next week I won’t watch the game and I’ll just wait for Crossing Broad to post the German announcers calling one play to see what happened.” Social media is maybe the greatest marketing tool of all-time and the NFL treats it like a direct threat rather than an ally to grow the game. Compare that to the NBA, which encourages sharing of GIFs and clips, and you see why one league is thriving and the other appears to be on a (gradual) decline.
Social media is more of a threat to the highlight shows – this is why CSN is painfully trying to bring in DEBATE* – than the leagues themselves. If anything, seeing something like Trevor Bauer’s bloody pinky on Twitter would’ve made you more likely to tune into the Indians-Blue Jays game the other night had they let him play [Jim: That’s literally what happened to me]. The NFL doesn’t get this dynamic**, and letting Twitter broadcast entire (shitty) Thursday Night games is not embracing social media– it’s trying to crowbar the old way into the new way. Just let people watch the games anywhere – TV, phone, tablet, computer, their fucking watch – and share and discuss the best parts on social media and websites within reason (not rip and post the whole game or entire drives) and you’ll generate more interest in the actual product, not less.
The officiating doesn’t help, but honestly I think it’s more the league’s overly complex rules clouding common sense judgement more than the officials themselves. The celebration rules are, obviously, the biggest offenders. Those moments are made for social sharing and generating interest. Reader Addison (@addisonroberts) told me yesterday that the last time Vernon Davis scored a touchdown, two years ago, his throwing the ball through the uprights was not a penalty. Now it is. That’s insane, and zaps the fun out of a completely harmless act. I get that certain excessive celebrations should be penalized lest you have players literally butt fucking hookers after a particularly exciting touchdown, but anything short of outside props or sex acts should be just fine as long as it doesn’t needlessly delay the game.
One other problem might be the pace of sports in general. Football is a slow game. It’s second only to baseball. Attention spans are dwindling, not because we’ve all turned dumb, but because we have other options now. 10 or 20 years ago our consumption options were limited, so we had no choice but to sit through commercials. Now we have a choice to do everything but sit through commercials. I’d be interested to see the RedZone subscriber numbers, because for my money that’s the best program on TV. It’s seven hours of nonstop action and it’s fun as hell. Football is fun! But sitting through an out-of-market game, complete with commercials, talking heads, and long delays as officials attempt to decode overly complex rules, can be painfully boring. The experience of being a sports fan is different in 2016. Content built for the online world is competing with traditional fare. It’s why e-sports are becoming a thing. Our traditional sports were built for a time with limited viewing options through one specific medium. Now people have other options, other mediums on which to consume anything. Sports still have their place, but leagues, especially the NFL, need to better understand the world in which it exists and embrace it rather than fight against it… because that will be a losing battle. We’re seeing it in the ratings.
*The other night I witnessed Ron Burke and Amy Fadool have an awkward 90-second pow-wow about some stupid talking point, and it was painful to watch. Turn-off-the-TV level bad.
**Neither does the guy who replied to my Tweet that it would’ve been a ratings win with “ratings? Ur either watching the game or ur not, people who weren’t had no idea he was bleeding. That doesn’t even make sense”. Ratings are counted every 15 minutes, so Bauer pitching like that would’ve kept more people around, and thus a higher average rating, and given how quickly it spread on social media, it absolutely would’ve made more people tune in to see the carnage. People don’t just sit and watch an entire game or not. It’s not 1992.