Showing posts with label Monday Night Football. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Monday Night Football. Show all posts

Monday, December 18, 2017

NFL Attendance Continues To Plummet As Empty Seat Epidemic Enters Week 15

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com


As the NFL copes with a ratings slump and ESPN slashes $80 million in salaries after losing 15,000 subscribers a day in October, another major issue facing the league continued to play out in week 15 - terrible attendance. 



Ravens vs. Browns, Start 2nd Qtr


While many blame the kneeing epidemic of unpatriotic players refusing to stand for the National Anthem - which started in the summer 2016 pre-season by former San Francisco 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick, others point to a boring season, cord cutters and broke millennials staying home. 


Either way, it"s ugly. Since most NFL attendance figures are based on "tickets distributed" as opposed to actual turnstile count, and most NFL ticket sales are to season-ticket holders, it"s nearly impossible to tell how many people are simply choosing not to attend games for which they"ve already bought tickets. Except, pictures don"t lie...


MetLife Stadium was a ghost town at the end of the first quarter, and "1/2 full" as the Philadelphia Eagles and NY Giants headed into the 4th quarter: 





The Arizona Cardinals vs. Washington Redskins at FedEx Field was ROUGH:




San Francisco 49ers vs. Tennessee Titans at Levi Stadium: 


30 minutes before kickoff: 



15 minutes after kickoff - NBC Bay Area web producer Sara Bueno tweeted "Most fans I"ve seen at a #49ers game in a very very long time"



The Ravens vs. Browns game was also a hot mess of empty seats: 


Kickoff




 Beginning of the second quarter




The Green Bay Packers vs. Carolina Panthers at Bank of America Stadium was cricket-city:




Now imagine how attendance would be if the country was covered in snow!?



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Thursday, November 23, 2017

NFL Ratings Slump Worsens As ESPN Forced To Slash $80 Million In Salary Costs

As the NFL continues to try to address the ongoing civil war between Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and Commissioner Roger Goodell, not to mention the intermittent hostile fire from the White House, viewers are increasingly deciding they"ve had enough and are abandoning professional football viewership altogether.  As the NY Post points out today, the embattled league saw ratings dip 6.3% in Week 11 meaning 1 million fewer people tuned in to see players take a knee during the national anthem versus last year.








The TV audience for NFL games steepened its slide in Week 11, losing 1 million viewers versus last year’s season-to-date average.


 


The 6.3 percent slump — worsening from comparable declines of 5.6 to 5.7 percent during the previous three weeks — plagued a week whose off-the-field drama made gridiron tackling seem almost tame by comparison.


 


After starting 11.8 percent behind last year’s TV audience for NFL games in Week 1, league viewership had either held its own or narrowed the gap through Week 8.


 


The 6.3 percent shortfall in Week 11 reflects an average viewership of 14.9 million for the NFL’s 68 national telecasts this year versus 15.9 million for the season-to-date in 2016.



NFL


Meanwhile, the ratings dip, combined with massive subscriber losses (see: ESPN Lost 15,000 Subscribers A Day In October), has taken a huge toll on ESPN which Yahoo News reports will have to cut some $80 million in salary costs to offset their plunging top line. 








ESPN is poised to slash an estimated $80 million in salaries and other costs in coming weeks, sources tell Sporting News.


 


The third round of layoffs in two years at the Disney-owned sports network is expected to come down after Thanksgiving and before Christmas. Sporting News broke the news that ESPN planned to lay off up to 60 people in late November and early December. Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated followed up with a report that said 100 positions could be impacted.


 


ESPN lost a whopping $1 billion in affiliate revenue after dropping 13 million subscribers in just six years, according to the SportsBusiness Journal. Sports insiders agree ESPN overpaid for the NFL"s "Monday Night Football" ($1.9 billion annually) and the NBA ($1.4 billion a year). During 2016, ESPN"s prime-time viewership fell 19 percent, according to the SBJ. Rather than driving Disney"s profits, ESPN has been dragging them down, spooking Wall Street analysts.


 


Meanwhile, ESPN management threw money at many anchors, analysts and reporters whose contracts were up in recent years to stop them from jumping to FS1 and other competitors. Some lost those high-paid TV gigs this spring. But ESPN is still on the hook to pay their full salaries until they get a new job elsewhere. Not many have over the past six months. Given the length of some of these expensive deals, not many will in the future, according to Awful Announcing.


 


"ESPN is dealing with three simple math problems. They have fewer subscribers than they planned for. They have higher costs than they planned for. They lower ratings than they hoped for," said one source.



Perhaps it"s time for the NFL to admit that while most Americans can agree that professional football is really fun to watch, roughly half of them are going to disagree with whatever political stance its players decide to cram down their throats during games...so maybe best to just stick to football.









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Monday, September 25, 2017

"Sunday Night Football" Ratings Slide Following Day Of Player Protests

As it turns out, President Donald Trump may have been on to something when he said NFL players were turning off viewers by kneeling during the National Anthem. As Deadline reports, both the NBC and NFL took a hit during Sunday Night Football last night when ratings dropped, as some Americans appeared to heed Trump’s call to boycott the NFL unless owners agree to fire or suspend players who don’t stand during the anthem.


In metered market numbers, the primetime match-up between the 27-10 winning Washington Redskins and the Oakland Raiders snared an 11.6/20. That’s the worst rating for SNF so far this season, marking an 8% dip from the early numbers of last week’s Atlanta Falcon’s 34-23 win over the Green Bay Packers, and a 10% dip from the same week last year.



The Redskins linked arms last night, while nearly every single Raiders player sat on the bench during the anthem, Deadline says.


Here are the top markets for last night’s SNF:


D.C.- 23.3/40


Richmond – 22.1/33


Norfolk – 19.8/31


Sacramento – 17.5/32


S.F./Oakland – 17.2/35


New Orleans – 17.2/24


Denver – 16.2/27


Buffalo- 15.4/24


Kansas City – 14.8/24


Las Vegas – 14.5/23


However, not every network saw a ratings dip. Bloomberg reports that CBS, whose Sunday night games included a closely fought matchup between the Green Bay Packers and the Cincinnati Bengals, experienced a small ratings bump, probably because the close score drew in more viewers. Fox hasn’t yet released viewership numbers for its NFL games on Sunday. Overnight ratings are subject to change when final numbers are released later Monday. The New York Times and other mainstream media had discounted Trump"s claim, tweeted over the weekend, that the NFL"s ratings had suffered because of the protests, despite a survey showing that many fans reported tuning out last year because of the protests.


Trump criticized the NFL Friday night during a rally in Alabama, where he called players who kneel for the anthem "a son of a b***H" and said any team owner who fired or suspended the protesting players would become "the most popular person in the country - at least for a week." His comments drew rebukes from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, as well as Patriots owner Robert Kraft and former Buffalo Bills and New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan.


The trend of kneeling for the anthem started last year when no- unemployed quarterback and then San Francisco 49er Colin Kaepernick refused to stand, saying he refused to honor the US because of institutionalized racism. Since then, a number of NFL players have publicly protested police brutality and racial injustice by not standing for the National Anthem.


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