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I think people are confusing "NFL" with "The entirety of football." Regardless of what happens in the NFL, there are still college football, high school football, and pee-wee leagues all over the country. Living in the south, I assure you that college football is more popular than ever. High school football, in places like Texas, is a second religion, and pee-wee leagues are booming.
The NFL, as a professional sports entity, will have its ebbs and flows. I suspect that amid CTE controversies, players kneeling, and the lack of ethics coming from the NFL Commissioner in how he punishes people, the NFL might see a temporary dwindling in its ratings. Or maybe not.
That said, football (the sport) has almost certainly passed baseball in its popularity and will probably outcompete other sports for years to come. Soccer, although popular worldwide, is like the metric system. We keep being told it will surpass all the other sports in popularity, but these are mostly the wishes of diehards and staunch holdouts. Soccer in America doesn't have the same sort of ground up infrastructure football does. Sure, you have it in the schools, but it doesn't get the funding that football does (in most places). Colleges, although they offer scholarships for soccer, don't make nearly the money that football does when a big team comes to town. Besides, Americans already have a game where we watch 90 minutes of scoreless action and get excited about it. It's called baseball.
Here's an example: This week, University of Alabama women's soccer (they don't even have a Division I soccer team for men) plays against the University of Tennessee. Now, translate this same matchup into an SEC football match: Alabama vs. Tennessee... Do you realize how vastly different the fanbase will be for that one game when comparing football and soccer?
Finally, there is one other thing that will keep the NFL alive and well. In fact, this is why I watch every weekend: Fantasy Football. Fantasy football got me back into the NFL after I'd long since lost interest. It has changed the way I watch the game, follow players, etc... This Thursday night I watched the Rams play the 49ers: A game I would otherwise have zero interest in. But, I had a running back playing and I needed to see how he did. So I watched the entire game.
Other sports simply have no chance of competing with the infrastructure football has in America. The popularity of football, the sport, will continue to feed into the NFL's success for many years to come.
All it's going to take is a majority of the fans to tune out. They keep up this kneeling bs people will tune out. I personally don't care what you want to protest. Yes you have that right. The problem is I don't want to see you kneeling. I want to see you do what you're paid to do. That is to entertain me by running up and down a field catching a ball getting the snot pounded out of you.
Protest on your own time not your employers.
I watch exactly one NFL game. And it's mostly for the commercials. Otherwise I don't care about the NFL or their protest
All it's going to take is a majority of the fans to tune out. They keep up this kneeling bs people will tune out. I personally don't care what you want to protest. Yes you have that right. The problem is I don't want to see you kneeling. I want to see you do what you're paid to do. That is to entertain me by running up and down a field catching a ball getting the snot pounded out of you.
Protest on your own time not your employers.
I watch exactly one NFL game. And it's mostly for the commercials. Otherwise I don't care about the NFL or their protest
More people are tuning out by getting rid of cable. My games are streamed on Sundays and Mondays, they don't have Nielsen ratings for people like me yet, plus the ratings for Monday weren't down, they were up.
The NFL has a problem with concussions, not ratings.
I think it's in decline and my view has nothing to do with the current issues around kneeling, etc. That will eventually pass and it won't kill the NFL. Other shifts are challenging the NFL and creating a long term decline.
Growth is required to survive and growing the NFL and preventing decline in popularity is going to be very difficult. How can the NFL grow and what are the challenges?
Sit and watch model vs. interactive/participatory entertainment
Generally, I think that leisure activities that rely on a "sit and watch" model will continue to lose favor. Film entertainment is just dabbling in interactive / VR and that will continue to accelerate boosting the preference for immersion. Video games are already interactive and allow you to play rather than just sitting there watching other people play. But even video games are getting more participatory with things like augmented reality (e.g. Pokemon Go) and 'Wii' type games. Non-participatory, 'sit and watch' is yesterday's model and will appeal less and less to younger people. 'Sit and watch' entertainment will desperately try to make the fan experience more interactive and participatory and some will make the transition (perhaps films/tv, maybe theater) and others will be just window dressing on a core 'sit there' model (music/concerts?, spectator sports?). I struggle to see how pro sports can be truly immersive and interactive (besides the obvious complementary things like video games based on real teams, watching in 360/selected views, etc - but this still relies on the popularity and interest in the real life version). Stadiums have had to become more like family entertainment centers to create a more exciting fan experience and to appeal to a broader set of fans (children, teens, mothers, girls' night out, etc) but that's not enough to create the kind of experience that tomorrow's consumer is looking for.
International growth
NFL growth into Canada (e.g. Toronto which is a huge market) has not been successful and the CFL has its own issues. Likewise, Mexico is soccer land and although NFL dabbles with a game played in Mexico City, I don't think real penetration into the Mexican market (growth of fan base for US teams or Mexican based teams) is going to happen. Games played in London are popular but very niche and a novelty. My opinion is that a London based team (as I think is an ambition) would be a disaster. Good market for filling stadiums two or three times a year and selling shirts and beer but will struggle for sustained mainstream traction. Asia/China - forget it. Africa - too complicated, not enough money.
Faster product lifecycles, marketing and corporate control
Sustained popularity of sports (and many other things) has relied on marketing and concentrated corporate power for a continued position as part of the fabric of American life. A few TV networks dictated the entertainment content that people watched. Likewise, a few companies dictated the music that would be popular and who becomes superstars. Marketing tie ups with large popular corporates like Coca-Cola and Nike help to reinforce the popularity of sports and sports stars. That model is continuing to weaken as the internet has broken the control that corporates have in dictating what people see and influencing what they like. Anyone with a phone can broadcast to millions of people with no cost and people are becoming famous over youtube. Like everything, sports rely on marketing, big media, and corporates to keep them relevant and to create a sense of excitement and interest around the sport. i think this will become more and more difficult as the world continues to evolve. In a world of faster cycles of popularity, it will be increasingly difficult for brands/products/'things' to sustain popularity over the long term. "Pop up" shops and restaurants will continue to grow in popularity and brands will come and go much more quickly. It will be increasingly more difficult for brands like McDonalds, Gap, Nike, etc to remain popular for decades. Fashion cycles move much faster and increasingly, TV is becoming dominated by limited 'season' series rather than shows that last for decades. Sustained interest in a fairly static leisure activity like football will be very difficult to continue in a much faster moving world. New stars are required to keep sports interesting and real superstars must increasingly be "multi-media" with their off-field, off-court lives even more interesting than their on field activities - e.g. Dennis Rodman, David Beckham, etc. You might argue that Tom Brady is in this class with his model wife, etc but I don't think football has any of these mega-stars. For one, Tom Brady's popularity is far from global. Anyway, I think it's very difficult for any sport to grow true global mega-stars and they have been few and far between over the years.
Corporate hospitality/entertaining/sponsorship A lot of the money fed into sports over the most recent wave of expansions with new stadiums, etc was based on corporate support with things like corporate luxury boxes and premium seating for executives and corporate hospitality. I think that the trend will be to reign in this kind of spending rather than to expand it. Of course people still love this stuff but employees lives are more complicated with two career families, overload of children's activities and expectations that parents (particularly men) spend more time with the family rather than out with the guys or entertaining between clients/vendors. As women continue to carve into the male dominated corporate world, I think that the appeal of corporate sports entertaining and employee perks will weaken. Professional women are busy juggling work and family and less likely to prioritize attending sporting events with their colleagues (and, as mentioned, continued growth in expectation that men to do the same). Signs of decline in NFL popularity (or changes in fan demographics) will also cause corporates to rethink spending on sponsorships, etc.
I don't think the NFL will die overnight but I do think that all sports will struggle. Some points above are specific to NFL but others will impact all spectator sports.
Last edited by just_because; 09-27-2017 at 05:37 AM..
All it's going to take is a majority of the fans to tune out. They keep up this kneeling bs people will tune out. I personally don't care what you want to protest. Yes you have that right. The problem is I don't want to see you kneeling. I want to see you do what you're paid to do. That is to entertain me by running up and down a field catching a ball getting the snot pounded out of you.
Protest on your own time not your employers.
I watch exactly one NFL game. And it's mostly for the commercials. Otherwise I don't care about the NFL or their protest
I honestly think the kneeling BS last weekend was due to personal beef between Goodell and Trump. The players were obviously ordered to kneel before Goodell to get back at Trump.
Then Trump muddy the waters by claiming kneeling is disrespectful to the flag, while locking arms and standing is ok. Hiding in the tunnel is apparently bad (expeciallly if one of your players doesn’t), the Cowboys did the confusing kneeling first, but standing for the anthem thing. It started with a BLM/police beef, then got wrapped up in a freedom of speech debate, then a patriotism debate, now it’s apparently a political referendum on Trump himself. Good news is it’s been hijacked so many times nobody knows what it’s supposed to mean therefore it’s meaningless. Now they’ll have to do a handstand during the anthem if they want to bring awareness of something.
I suggest keeping them in the locker room if they can’t handle the responsibility of simply doing what everybody else in entire stadium is doing during the anthem. People want to see you throw a ball and run around, they don’t actually care what you think.
NFL lost me when this whole sit/kneel for the anthem BS started with millionaire players comparing the owners to slave owners and the players being slaves.
Bunch of self entitlement going on there. You play a game and make more money in a single season than us "common" folk make in a lifetime. You can't appreciate that?
If the NFL died, I'm pretty sure everyone would be fine.
I hear what you are saying. And you're right.
But actually, we would all be better off without the NFL. All of us.
If there were no NFL there would be no college football and colleges would have to go back to teaching and discussing. College tuition would stop rising.
High school kids would stop dreaming of playing for the NFL (or NBA) and may even get serious about some of their subjects. They would plan on doing something profitable and worthwhile with their lives, and ordinary bullies and thugs would no longer be considered heroes in high school halls.
I honestly think the kneeling BS last weekend was due to personal beef between Goodell and Trump. The players were obviously ordered to kneel before Goodell to get back at Trump.
Then Trump muddy the waters by claiming kneeling is disrespectful to the flag, while locking arms and standing is ok. Hiding in the tunnel is apparently bad (expeciallly if one of your players doesn’t), the Cowboys did the confusing kneeling first, but standing for the anthem thing. It started with a BLM/police beef, then got wrapped up in a freedom of speech debate, then a patriotism debate, now it’s apparently a political referendum on Trump himself. Good news is it’s been hijacked so many times nobody knows what it’s supposed to mean therefore it’s meaningless. Now they’ll have to do a handstand during the anthem if they want to bring awareness of something.
I suggest keeping them in the locker room if they can’t handle the responsibility of simply doing what everybody else in entire stadium is doing during the anthem. People want to see you throw a ball and run around, they don’t actually care what you think.
Actually about 10 years ago players being on the field during the anthem was optional not mandatory. Then the government actually paid the NFL to put on the overt displays of patriotism we had seen ever since.
Actually about 10 years ago players being on the field during the anthem was optional not mandatory. Then the government actually paid the NFL to put on the overt displays of patriotism we had seen ever since.
I can see it going back to that. It just makes it easier on everybody.
All it's going to take is a majority of the fans to tune out. They keep up this kneeling bs people will tune out. I personally don't care what you want to protest. Yes you have that right. The problem is I don't want to see you kneeling. I want to see you do what you're paid to do. That is to entertain me by running up and down a field catching a ball getting the snot pounded out of you.
Protest on your own time not your employers.
I watch exactly one NFL game. And it's mostly for the commercials. Otherwise I don't care about the NFL or their protest
Football fans are not going to tune out. My boyfriend is a former marine, he doesn't like that they don't stand at all. But he lives in the winter for Fantasy Football, he is in several different leagues. None of the guys in his groups are going to stop. They love it too much. I see both sides of the issue and think both sides have valid points, but I love my Eagles and not planning to skip anything.
Maybe if you live in Miami with lots to do in winter you might stop watching, but for many of us, football season is the only thing to look forward to in winter and I doubt it's going to be hurt by this long term.
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