A point we’ve made numerous times regarding the National Football League allowing players to take a knee during the National Anthem is that the League’s owners don’t know their own audience. The NFL will prohibit excessive touchdown celebrations and nobody argues over freedom of speech and expression. But once it’s a political cause, things become controversial. That’s a given, but it’s also a given that when over 70 percent of your audience wants players to stand for the National Anthem, you should probably require them to stand.
We’ve also documented the NFL’s steady decline since then too…
- During the third week of the season, right after the new surge in players taking the knee, there was a 17.8 percent decline in ticket orders.
- The NFL has since become the sports league viewed the least favorably. In September, a Winston poll found that the NFL has become the least-liked sports league, with 44 percent viewing the league favorably and 40 percent viewing it unfavorably. The figures a month before that poll were 57 percent to 23 percent, respectively.
- Through the first six weeks of the NFL season, total viewership has dropped 7.5% relative to 2016, from 16.2 million viewers to 15 million. The drop is even more sizable (-18.7%) when compared to 2015.
- The denial among some liberals is quite hilarious, simply because Trump is involved:
Same author, one week apart pic.twitter.com/fWbJljFky2
— Matt Palumbo (@MattPalumbo12) October 5, 2017
Things are getting so bad that the NFL’s drop in viewership is threatening the stock prices of the companies that broadcast the games. ESPN reported, “Credit Suisse lowered its price targets on both Fox and CBS stock, citing NFL ratings declines. ‘If ratings don’t improve materially, we see a potential headwind to domestic advertising revenues,’ the investment bank’s analyst Omar Sheikh wrote of Fox on Thursday.”
So at this point, the following political cartoon pretty much summarizes what happened. The NFL picked a fight with The Donald, and The Donald won…
To no surprise, Goodell has now stated that he’ll work to reduce the number of players protesting to zero.
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