Ratings up, future bright: NFL rebounds off troubled seasons

The most compelling drama in the NFL this season unfolded on the field, not off it.

And any thought that the league was in jeopardy of losing its spot as America’s favorite sport has been set on the back burner, which is mostly where the domestic abuse cases, national anthem controversies and even the concerns about player safety resided for the bulk of the season.

To be sure, 2019 was far from perfect. Antonio Brown, a handful of overmatched officials and even a cameo appearance by Colin Kaepernick kept a spotlight on the warts this behemoth of a league will always carry. And certainly the Super Bowl will offer an opportunity to discuss Chiefs receiver Tyreek Hill’s history with domestic violence and the NFL’s response to it.

But for the better part of the season, the stickiest topics have included the quarterback-turnedpitchman Baker Mayfield, and his overrated Cleveland Browns, the underachieving Cowboys and the possible end of the Patriots’ dynasty, to say nothing of a legion of rising young stars who were scattered throughout the league. It is led by Patrick Mahomes, the 24-year-old quarterback who brought the Chiefs to the Super Bowl to face the 49ers, the team trying to complete the NFL’s version of a fairy tale by going from 4-12 to hoisting the Lombardi Trophy in the span of a year.

America’s ever-expanding gambling landscape, the continued strength of fantasy football, the league’s steady growth in Britain and other countries, along with a fair share of good games placed in the correct time slots and made available on a growing number of platforms also played roles in keeping eyeballs focused on the games.

It all helps explain the league’s back-to-back 5% TV ratings increases — two straight years with an uptick after a two-year stretch (2016-17) during which the NFL’s status as the king of American sports took a hit, due in part to President Donald Trump’s withering criticism and, more broadly, to the league’s problematic handling of myriad problems that came fast and furious. The league accounted for 47 of the 50 most-watched shows on TV last year.

“The NFL is in a better space leading up to the ... Super Bowl, than they have been in a few years,” said Bettina Cornwell, the academic director at University of Oregon’s Warsaw Sports Marketing Center. “Less limelight can be a good thing.”

While staying out of the constant crisis-management loop, the league took advantage of trends that have been evolving for a decade or more.

The NFL’s embrace of fantasy football at the beginning of the 2000s — replete with in-stadium Wi-Fi advances, stat-heavy tickers and updates that permeate the telecasts and both league and team endorsements with fantasy websites — set a template that, in turn, positioned the league to take advantage of the more recent expansion of legalized gambling.

Long the most reluctant (and hypocritical) of the American pro leagues when it came to acknowledging the reality that gambling is a key driver of fan interest, the NFL signed a marketing deal with Caesars Entertainment at the start of 2019. A handful of teams have inked their own casino deals, as well. Next season, the Raiders are moving into a $1.8 billion stadium in Las Vegas — a city that NFL officials worked hard to keep at arm’s length for decades.