Blame sliding NFL ratings on overexposure

It was not the news that Phil Bengtson wanted to hear. Already taking heat one year after succeeding Vince Lombardi as coach of the Green Bay Packers, Bengtson listened as his All-Pro guard Jerry Kramer explained why he was quitting the game at the still-serviceable age of 33.

“I simply couldn’t afford to put another year into football,” Kramer told Bengtson.

You read that correctly. Even for a top player, the financial rewards of playing professional football in the late 1960s could not compete with the other business ventures Kramer was pondering at the time.

Many explanations are offered for the 15% drop in National Football League viewership this year compared with the same period in 2015. Rarely mentioned, however, is the reluctance of NFL power brokers to leave a single dime of media money on the table, a short-sighted money grab that has overexposed the product and further contributed to the epidemic of serious injuries that impairs players’ lives and turned an already brutal game into a war of attrition.

From wall-to-wall telecasts, gaudy playhouses that physically separate the nation’s well-off from the average fan and the clownish “Color Rush” uniforms that sever the visual connection of a franchise to its past, the NFL business model is a textbook example of shorttermism gone amok.

“The NFL is a natural cartel that exerts major monopoly power over its diehard fans, media outlets and general taxpayers,” John Vrooman, a Vanderbilt University professor and authority on sports economics, wrote in a recent email. “By artificially limiting the number of franchises, the league is able to maximize revenues, profits, franchise value and expansion and relocation while playing thinly veiled extortion games for public stadium subsidies.”

According to Vrooman, the average value of an NFL franchise increased at an exponential rate of 11.6% since 1991. Average franchise values for the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball each grew by about 10% annually over that quarter-century. Those gains dwarf the 2.9% annualized growth rate in the median household income during that period.

Besides surging ticket prices, franchise values have been driven by advertisers desperate to reach a prime demographic increasingly splintered across various digital platforms. Demand for ads has been met with a commensurate supply of games in which to display them.

“Media rights fees have exploded for all major North American leagues under the current contracts largely because of the cord-cutting advent of new media,” Vrooman wrote. “Live sports are the only live media content remaining that is attractive to commercial sponsorships.”

Bulking up

So what does any of this have to do with Kramer? Since his retirement, the average NFL salary has climbed from $23,000 to nearly $2 million. (Even at that number, players receive less than half of league revenue.)

With dollar signs flashing in their heads, athletes of all ages are incentivized to get bigger and stronger — often unnaturally so and often at the expense of their long-term health — in a process that could lead to the injuries that detract from the game’s appeal and, more importantly, from the post-career lives of the players.

I recently viewed the CBS broadcast of a 1969 preseason game between the Packers and Chicago Bears. It was only the second of six such pretend contests, yet there was Bart Starr taking snaps well into the fourth quarter.

The 47,014 fans in attendance at Milwaukee County Stadium that August evening saw a game, not a scrimmage. And not a single player broke a bone, tore an ACL or ripped an artery, though undiagnosed brain trauma is probably another matter.

Walt knew best

The entertainment business is unique in its vulnerability to oversaturation.

Ironically, two of the media outlets (ABC and ESPN) that have bankrolled the overfeeding of pro sports are owned by the Walt Disney Co., whose founder famously advised his show-biz colleagues to “always leave them wanting more.”

Pete Rozelle, the balloon-loving NFL commissioner who presided over a period of healthy growth during Kramer’s era, also recognized the value of restraint.

Since then, the NFL product has become too ubiquitous to seem special. The television goose that laid all those golden eggs has a sprained tendon and is headed for injured reserve.