NFL RATINGS TAKE HIT, BUT DON’T BLAME ANTHEM DISPUTE

TV viewership already was declining before President Trump’s comments

Here’s another strategy for morning-after quarterbacks to ponder: Are NFL players’ kneeling protests hurting TV ratings and even, perhaps, driving down TV stocks?

The answer is likely to be as hotly contested as an NFL line of scrimmage. NFL ratings are down for the just-started season, just as they were last season, and stocks of the major networks that broadcast NFL games are trending down, too.

But ratings for a variety of sports broadcasts have seen declines with NASCAR and the NBA also drawing fewer TV viewers — likely influenced by huge shifts in the way fans watch sports and by other factors that may have drawn their attention away, from hurricanes to last year’s dramapacked presidential election.

And fans may have tuned out well before President Trump’s exhortation last weekend to boycott games if players kneel, with these early abstainers acting out of sympathy with Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who says he used the spotlight to protest racial bias in the judicial system. Others may have backed away because they disagreed with Kaepernick. And still others may have dropped the NFL for a totally separate reason: mounting evidence that many players have suffered severe brain disease.

What’s not disputed is that NFL ratings were down about 10% for the first three weeks of the season, with about 15.8 million viewers (watching live or on DVR same-day), compared to 17.6 million during the first three weeks of 2016, according to Nielsen data. That follows a trend last year of overall viewership during the 2016 regular season, when ratings fell 8%.

And this past week, NFL viewership fell, on average, 4% from the prior week (not counting ESPN’s Monday Night Football broadcast), Nielsen data shows.

As the beginning of the NFL season has played out, stocks of networks that broadcast games and deliver pay-TV programming have taken hits, too. The overall market is up 2% in that time.

President Trump’s comments Friday that owners should fire or suspend players who protest, followed by tweets that called on fans to act, has sparked broader protests. Many more NFL players kneeled as the national anthem was played at Sunday games.

One problem with making a direct, causal link between NFL ratings and protests: The firestorm of controversy in the past few days doesn’t explain the down drift of ratings during the season’s first two weeks. A second data point that’s clear: TV watching of all stripes, not just sports, is losing its hold over the American viewer. Fewer U.S. homes, 79%, are getting pay-TV service, down from 84% in 2014, Leichtman says. And that fragmentation of the viewing public as more customers cut, shave or shirk the pay-TV cord impacts viewership, too. NFL ratings do not include most streaming options.

The NFL attempted to schedule more desirable prime-time matchups to stoke viewing this season, but that hasn’t played out. “Despite that proactive attempt, this season also seems to be off to a weaker-than-expected start in terms of the overall ratings,” said Tuna Amobi, an equity analyst at investment research firm CFRA.

But about connecting Trump’s comments to viewing declines, “I would be hard-pressed to draw that correlation,” he said.

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MATT KARTOZIAN, USA TODAY SPORTS Cowboys players, coaches and staff take a knee prior to the national anthem before Monday night’s game vs. the Cardinals.