DOWN THE TUBES
NFL ratings may fall further as headwinds grow
NFL ratings are facing yet another brutal blitz this fall — and few pundits are betting that they won’t get sacked.
With ratings having plunged 8 percent in 2016 and nearly 10 percent last year, experts say this season’s ratings could fall even faster as the league continues to grapple with a slew of ugly controversies that have turned off viewers.
Last week, a judge ordered a trial for Colin Kaepernick’s claims that NFL owners conspired to keep him out of the league after he sparked the national anthem protests. While no date has been set, a source told CBS News the courtroom spectacle could drag through the regular season.
The fracas over players kneeling during the national anthem to protest racism — regularly stoked by tweets from President Trump — is one of a few headaches for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who has been bashed for his failure to act.
Amid the dithering, the league and the NFL Players Association have fallen into an embarrassing silence.
“No new rules relating to the anthem will be issued or enforced for the next several weeks while these confidential discussions are ongoing,” according to their most recent statement on July 20.
Elsewhere, the NFL contin- ues to be dogged by headlines over its concussion settlements with players, which crossed the $500 million mark this spring.
According to research firm Statista, participation in tackle football among US kids ages 6 and older has plunged 38 percent since 2006.
That’s not good, says sports media analyst Brian Mulligan, who calls the metric “the No. 1 predictor of future interest in the NFL.”
Mulligan adds that countries supplying the most immigrants to the US — Mexico, China, Cuba and India — all prefer soccer to American football and have no interest in switching to the NFL playbook.
Another troubling sign for the NFL, according to some media watchers, is the broader indifference of millennials, who aren’t tied to cable TV the way their parents are.
Indeed, younger viewers’ growing phone addictions may help explain why ratings for other big TV broadcast events like the World Series and the Oscars are suffering nasty slumps of their own.
“The downward trend in ratings is unavoidable — even though NFL ratings are outperforming the broader TV market,” BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield told The Post.
Sports Media Watch reported on Friday that NFL preseason viewership was down 9 percent across NBC, CBS, Fox, ESPN and the NFL Network. And though experts doubt the ability of early results to predict regular-season viewing, a couple of declines were especially worrisome.
A game featuring the Dallas Cowboys on Aug. 26 was the team’s least-watched broadcast on a network since 2009. A match-up between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals that same day was the least-watched preseason game on Fox since 2008.
But the worst news for the NFL this weekend may have come on Monday, courtesy of Kaepernick. The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback tweeted what looks like a new ad campaign with Nike.
“Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything,” the Nike ad declared.