The NFL's Ratings Are Falling Even As They Are Renegotiating Their TV Deals

The ratings from NBC's Sunday night game fell 16.1% from the ratings of the first 2019 Sunday game (and that game's ratings had fallen from the year before, too).

Now the ratings for the Monday night games falls 17.2%.

ESPN's first outing of the 2020 National Football League featuring the New York Giants hosting the Pittsburgh Steelers attracted an average of 10.76 million viewers on Monday night the network announced, down 17.2% from last year's first Monday night game.

That's just the drop for the first game.

What was the drop for the second game?

Well, CNBC doesn't want to tell you. They're going to make you work out the math.

The second game between the Tennessee Titans and Denver Broncos registered 7.6 million viewers as the Titans won, 16-14.

The viewership was down from last year’s average of 13 million viewers for the first game in the Monday Night Football doubleheader that featured the Houston Texans and New Orleans Saints.

That's a drop of 43%.

Forty. Three. Percent.

ESPN looks for something to brag about -- and it's sad what they try to brag about.

Monday's first game was between two of the most-watched teams in football: The Giants, which play in the huge NYC market, and the Steelers, which don't have a huge market but they have a large following because they're in the f#cking AFC championship game like once every two years.

Seriously: When do the Steelers not make the playoffs? Almost never.

Now, ESPN does admit that Giants-Steelers game was down from the 2019 opener. But they say that at least the ratings were better than the 2018 opener.

The problem with that is that the 2018 opener featured two teams which are perennial losers and who have almost no following outside their metro areas, the Jets and the Lions.

The audience for the Steelers' victory surpassed ESPN's audience for the 2018 MNF doubleheader opening game between the New York Jets and Detroit Lions (10.4 million viewers)...

So ESPN is bragging that a game between the Giants and Steelers just barely edged a stinker between the Jets and the Lions.

BTW, I know the Giants are terrible recently but they do manage an occasional ass-pull Super Bowl win to keep their long-suffering fans just satisfied enough to keep them tuning in for more humiliation.

Now, about those contract renegotiations with the networks: the Observer notes that literally billions are at stake. That is, the NFL may have to settle for a contract that is billions shy of what they were hoping for.

Get woke...

What we do know for certain is that the NFL and broadcast networks are in the process of renegotiating their media deals, the majority of which will expire after the 2022 season. The league is hoping to double their fees and as the most powerful annual driver of live-viewership, they hold the leverage. But the broadcast networks will use any and all ratings declines to bolster their negotiating power.

The NFL wants to double its fees as it loses viewers almost every year?

Well good luck with that, Idiots.

Update: Speaking of the Detroit Lions, Clyde Shelton notes that Matthew Stafford is now full BLM/antifa:

Matthew Stafford goes full SJW.

The Players Tribune:

"Deep down inside, no matter what political party we support, or what we do for a living, we know what's real. Police brutality, white privilege, racism -- it's all real." at_Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford, in his own words.

posted by Ace at 05:39 PM

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