NFL Draft NFL Excuses Run Out After Ratings Declines Continue - Page 28

Eleazar · 11-03-2017, 05:07 AM

NFL's Litany of Excuses Runs Out After Ratings Fall for Second Year

By Lucas Shaw
Bloomberg.com
November 2, 2017, 11:30 AM CDT

TV networks are running out of excuses for the dwindling popularity of the National Football League.

They blamed the election for ratings declines last year, and hurricanes for a soft week one in September. Protests during the national anthem, and President Donald Trump’s criticism of the league, have faded from the headlines.

Advertisers are starting to believe a different explanation: the viewers aren’t coming back. Audiences are down an average 7 percent from a year ago through the first eight weeks of the season, excluding last Monday. That’s on top of a decrease of about 8 percent last season that spurred numerous changes in the broadcasts, from shorter commercials to better matchups earlier in the year.

“There’s just not as many people watching TV the way they used to watch TV,” said Jeremy Carey, managing director of Optimum Sports, a sports marketing agency. “It’s going to be an issue for advertisers when they can’t reach a large-scale audience the way they have.”

With CBS Corp., 21st Century Fox Inc. and Walt Disney Co. set to report earnings in the next few days, analysts are bound to raise questions. These companies have used the popularity of the games to extract additional fees from cable operators, promote other shows on their networks and sell lots of commercials. Pro football games drew about $3.5 billion in ad spending last year, including the postseason, according to SMI Media Inc.

Media companies have spent billions of dollars on the right to air football games, which had been immune to the erosion of viewership for other TV programming. Audiences for TV networks have diminished for years as the growing popularity of online alternatives Netflix and YouTube and the availability of most shows on-demand have reduced the appeal of dramas and comedies. Live TV, like sports, was supposed to be immune, but that theory looks highly questionable now.

Ratings for the NFL suggest the same societal trends are now affecting the league, even if the declines aren’t as dramatic. The drop in game viewership ranges from 5 percent for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” to 11 percent for the CBS Sunday package. “Monday Night Football,” on Disney’s ESPN, has attracted more fans this year than a year ago, but the numbers are still down from 2015.

Viewership of the four main broadcast networks fell 8.7 percent last year, and 12 percent among adults 18 to 49, an important demographic for advertisers.

CBS’s 11 percent slump for NFL games is the steepest of the networks. Its parent company, which reports earnings after the close Thursday, is more vulnerable than rivals to the trend because the vast majority of its earnings come from the broadcast network. The declines at CBS reinforce a complaint that has gotten louder and louder in recent weeks: The league got greedy in adding the Thursday night game on broadcast.

Reserving top games for Thursday night robbed other time periods of good match-ups. After a nosedive in ratings at “Monday Night Football” last season, the league has scheduled better games for that time period, further damaging Sunday afternoon.

“Ratings declines on both general entertainment and NFL programming could be the single biggest point of focus for investors this quarter, and we’re not sure what media companies can say about the health and tone of the ad market to assuage fears,” Steven Cahall, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a note last month.

Viewership is dropping fast among people under 54 -- a key demographic for advertisers -- and even faster among those 18 to 34. Audiences for games on CBS, NBC and Fox have slid at least 10 percent among that younger cohort.

Advertisers aren’t abandoning the NFL, one of the only places they can still reach more than 10 million people at once. But they are growing concerned. John Schnatter, who appears in TV spots on behalf of his Papa John’s Pizza International Inc., laid into the league on a conference call this week, blaming the ratings for his company’s slow revenue growth and calling for the league to put an end to player protests.

Networks and other advertisers identify a wide range of reasons for the NFL’s struggles. The league has overexposed itself by making highlights available on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Snapchat. Identifiable stars like Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers have either retired or gotten hurt. The quality of play has deteriorated. Player protests and concussions have driven away some fans.

Some executives argue viewership of the league has still improved over the long term while dropping for every other show. Yet the amount of time people have spent watching football this season is at the lowest point since 2011, back when there were fewer televised games, according to Mike Mulvihill, Fox Sports’ head of research.

“The cumulative effect of everything happening in the world at large is having an impact on NFL viewership,” Mulvihill said. “ The league was defying the laws of gravity.”

Randallflagg · 02-15-2018, 06:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

No, but you're clearly a butt ****ing moron.

You really shouldn't go around telling people what I have done to you....it's unbecoming of you....

**DaneMcCloud** · 02-15-2018, 06:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BiStateNo

You really shouldn't go around telling people what I have done to you....it's unbecoming of you....

You're ****ing weird.

Holy shit.

Sweet Daddy Hate · 02-15-2018, 06:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reerun_KC

Commercials. Way too many commercials.

Brady. Way too much ****ing Brady.

The only reason people watch that shit is to see if he'll get his ass beat. You can't build a program on something that hollow and ultimately meaningless.

SuperBowl4 · 02-15-2018, 08:30 PM

A record $158 plus million was bet on Super Bowl 52 at Nevada Sports books. Follow the money

**DaneMcCloud** · 02-15-2018, 08:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reerun_KC

Commercials. Way too many commercials.

Is that the excuse as to why all TV ratings are down?

AussieChiefsFan · 02-16-2018, 07:20 AM

To me it's as simple as the reason being that when ratings are as insanely high as they have been for the NFL, there's bound to be a dip for whatever reason. Personally, if I had to point to one thing that would stop me from wanting to watch games live would be the commercials. It's kinda shitty having to sit through hours of commercials at 4am on a Monday, but at the same time, it's a product of how the game works.

Again though, the NFL still gets crazy ratings even with the recent dips in viewership.

**DaneMcCloud** · 02-17-2018, 08:21 PM

http://variety.com/2018/digital/news...on-1202702104/

NFL Thursday Night Digital Rights: Amazon, YouTube, Twitter, Verizon Again at Bidding Table

The usual tech suspects are looking to snag the NFL’s digital-streaming rights for “Thursday Night Football” for upcoming seasons, with Amazon, Google’s YouTube, Verizon and Twitter each on the short list of bidders, sources confirmed. The NFL is looking to cut a streaming deal for as long as five years for the “TNF” digital rights, as first reported by Bloomberg. The league sees value in carving up the 11-game Thursday night set — in addition to the five-year Fox broadcast deal it struck last month — with a global digital distributor that can enhance the telecasts with social extensions and interactive overlays, to reach younger audiences.

Twitter, Amazon and YouTube have been in the “Thursday Night Football” bidding mix for the last several years. Verizon also is looking to nab global digital multiplatform rights to the Thursday games, as first reported by Recode; that comes after the telco inked a five-year pact for nonexclusive U.S. mobile rights to stream NFL regular- and post-season games. Facebook, which has bid for NFL live games in the past, earlier dropped out of the latest cycle of “Thursday Night Football” negotiators. Amazon won the “Thursday Night Football” digital derby last season, after Twitter had them a year earlier. Amazon’s Prime Video drew 18.4 million total viewers in 224 countries and territories for the NFL games. Amazon’s average-minute audience watching the NFL games for at least 30 seconds topped 310,000, 17% higher than Twitter’s results the season prior.

The talks for ancillary “TNF” digital rights continue after Fox reached a five-year deal last month with the league for the Thursday night package, under which it is said to be paying more than $650 million per year. According to the NFL, Amazon’s Prime Video streaming in 2017 boosted overall consumption of “TNF” by about 2.5%. “In a world where people are trying to drive as much incremental consumption as possible, this is a small but growing asset for us,” NFL senior VP of digital media Vishal Shah said at an industry conference last fall.

The NFL, Amazon, YouTube, Twitter and Verizon declined to comment on the latest “TNF” bidding.

The jockeying for “Thursday Night Football” streaming rights is a microcosm of the larger incursion by technology companies into the sports-media world. Observers expect that within a few years, a major streaming platform will steal a bucket of premium rights from a TV broadcaster. That hasn’t happened yet, but digital players have been nibbling around the edges. Last month, YouTube TV struck a deal with Los Angeles Football Club for exclusive L.A.-area broadcast rights, a Major League Soccer expansion team that will begin competing in the 2018 season.

-------------
But, but, but RATINGS!

Valiant · 02-18-2018, 02:29 PM

Surprised Netflix is not involved.

They could do a NFL on Netflix stand alone or add on feature. Include the game, then test backlog of games, maybe select your favorite teams.

**DaneMcCloud** · 02-18-2018, 03:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Valiant

Surprised Netflix is not involved.

They could do a NFL on Netflix stand alone or add on feature. Include the game, then test backlog of games, maybe select your favorite teams.

Netflix is focused on original content.

Shelling out hundreds of millions for rights to stream Thursday night NFL games isn’t a move they need to make in order to attract new subscribers.

Discuss Thrower · 02-27-2018, 04:37 PM

Papa John's is killing its official NFL sponsorship deal.

We will shift our marketing from the broader NFL sponsorship" to focus on specific teams and players, Papa John's CEO Steve Ritchie said in a call with investors on Tuesday.

Papa John's and the NFL said in a statement that they made a "mutual decision" to end the pizza chain's official league sponsorship deal.

On Tuesday, Papa John's reported that system-wide comparable sales dropped 3.9% in North America in the fourth quarter.

Executives said that "negative consumer sentiment" contributed to the sales slump.

ToxSocks · 02-27-2018, 04:44 PM

Now that Marcus Peters is traded i fully expect to see a bump in Chiefs TV viewership.

**EDIT** that was sarcasm btw

JoeyChuckles · 02-27-2018, 05:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Detoxing

Now that Marcus Peters is traded i fully expect to see a bump in Chiefs TV viewership.

**EDIT** that was sarcasm btw

Yeah, and now the richies in the yellow seats at Arrowhead should no longer be scared to come out of their suites too, now that the fear of being hit by a flag or sock is almost non-existent.

Al Bundy · 02-27-2018, 05:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Discuss Thrower

Papa John's is killing its official NFL sponsorship deal.

We will shift our marketing from the broader NFL sponsorship" to focus on specific teams and players, Papa John's CEO Steve Ritchie said in a call with investors on Tuesday.

Papa John's and the NFL said in a statement that they made a "mutual decision" to end the pizza chain's official league sponsorship deal.

On Tuesday, Papa John's reported that system-wide comparable sales dropped 3.9% in North America in the fourth quarter.

Executives said that "negative consumer sentiment" contributed to the sales slump.

Papa John's pizza's are crap, that is why the sales dropped.

chinaski · 02-27-2018, 05:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al Bundy

Papa John's pizza's are crap, that is why the sales dropped.

A lot of competition in the Pizza market...

Last time I had Pizza Hut though it was disgusting. Not even edible.

As far as the ratings declines, Dane had some good points. Also, low turnout at stadiums has a lot to do with pricing and putting a shit product on the field. Who is gonna pay good money to watch a shitty team?

MarkDavis'Haircut · 02-27-2018, 07:52 PM

The ratings hit a peak a couple of years ago but the real decline lies in how boring the games are getting. The product is suffering. Too many bullshit flags, defenses are castrated and the games take forever.

11-03-2017, 05:07 AM
Eleazar Beyond the Rapids Join Date: May 2003 Location: Langley, VA Casino cash: $-370000	NFL Excuses Run Out After Ratings Declines Continue NFL's Litany of Excuses Runs Out After Ratings Fall for Second Year By Lucas Shaw Bloomberg.com November 2, 2017, 11:30 AM CDT TV networks are running out of excuses for the dwindling popularity of the National Football League. They blamed the election for ratings declines last year, and hurricanes for a soft week one in September. Protests during the national anthem, and President Donald Trump’s criticism of the league, have faded from the headlines. Advertisers are starting to believe a different explanation: the viewers aren’t coming back. Audiences are down an average 7 percent from a year ago through the first eight weeks of the season, excluding last Monday. That’s on top of a decrease of about 8 percent last season that spurred numerous changes in the broadcasts, from shorter commercials to better matchups earlier in the year. “There’s just not as many people watching TV the way they used to watch TV,” said Jeremy Carey, managing director of Optimum Sports, a sports marketing agency. “It’s going to be an issue for advertisers when they can’t reach a large-scale audience the way they have.” With CBS Corp., 21st Century Fox Inc. and Walt Disney Co. set to report earnings in the next few days, analysts are bound to raise questions. These companies have used the popularity of the games to extract additional fees from cable operators, promote other shows on their networks and sell lots of commercials. Pro football games drew about $3.5 billion in ad spending last year, including the postseason, according to SMI Media Inc. Media companies have spent billions of dollars on the right to air football games, which had been immune to the erosion of viewership for other TV programming. Audiences for TV networks have diminished for years as the growing popularity of online alternatives Netflix and YouTube and the availability of most shows on-demand have reduced the appeal of dramas and comedies. Live TV, like sports, was supposed to be immune, but that theory looks highly questionable now. Ratings for the NFL suggest the same societal trends are now affecting the league, even if the declines aren’t as dramatic. The drop in game viewership ranges from 5 percent for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” to 11 percent for the CBS Sunday package. “Monday Night Football,” on Disney’s ESPN, has attracted more fans this year than a year ago, but the numbers are still down from 2015. Viewership of the four main broadcast networks fell 8.7 percent last year, and 12 percent among adults 18 to 49, an important demographic for advertisers. CBS’s 11 percent slump for NFL games is the steepest of the networks. Its parent company, which reports earnings after the close Thursday, is more vulnerable than rivals to the trend because the vast majority of its earnings come from the broadcast network. The declines at CBS reinforce a complaint that has gotten louder and louder in recent weeks: The league got greedy in adding the Thursday night game on broadcast. Reserving top games for Thursday night robbed other time periods of good match-ups. After a nosedive in ratings at “Monday Night Football” last season, the league has scheduled better games for that time period, further damaging Sunday afternoon. “Ratings declines on both general entertainment and NFL programming could be the single biggest point of focus for investors this quarter, and we’re not sure what media companies can say about the health and tone of the ad market to assuage fears,” Steven Cahall, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a note last month. Viewership is dropping fast among people under 54 -- a key demographic for advertisers -- and even faster among those 18 to 34. Audiences for games on CBS, NBC and Fox have slid at least 10 percent among that younger cohort. Advertisers aren’t abandoning the NFL, one of the only places they can still reach more than 10 million people at once. But they are growing concerned. John Schnatter, who appears in TV spots on behalf of his Papa John’s Pizza International Inc., laid into the league on a conference call this week, blaming the ratings for his company’s slow revenue growth and calling for the league to put an end to player protests. Networks and other advertisers identify a wide range of reasons for the NFL’s struggles. The league has overexposed itself by making highlights available on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Snapchat. Identifiable stars like Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers have either retired or gotten hurt. The quality of play has deteriorated. Player protests and concussions have driven away some fans. Some executives argue viewership of the league has still improved over the long term while dropping for every other show. Yet the amount of time people have spent watching football this season is at the lowest point since 2011, back when there were fewer televised games, according to Mike Mulvihill, Fox Sports’ head of research. “The cumulative effect of everything happening in the world at large is having an impact on NFL viewership,” Mulvihill said. “ The league was defying the laws of gravity.”
Posts: 80,659

02-15-2018, 08:30 PM	#409
SuperBowl4 MVP Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: HERMOSA BEACH,CA Casino cash: $7874900	A record $158 plus million was bet on Super Bowl 52 at Nevada Sports books. Follow the money
Posts: 13,720

02-16-2018, 07:20 AM	#411
AussieChiefsFan MVP Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Sydney, Australia Casino cash: $6228501	To me it's as simple as the reason being that when ratings are as insanely high as they have been for the NFL, there's bound to be a dip for whatever reason. Personally, if I had to point to one thing that would stop me from wanting to watch games live would be the commercials. It's kinda shitty having to sit through hours of commercials at 4am on a Monday, but at the same time, it's a product of how the game works. Again though, the NFL still gets crazy ratings even with the recent dips in viewership.
Posts: 13,751

02-17-2018, 08:21 PM	#412
DaneMcCloud Supporter Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: Hollywood, CA Casino cash: $10053648	http://variety.com/2018/digital/news...on-1202702104/ NFL Thursday Night Digital Rights: Amazon, YouTube, Twitter, Verizon Again at Bidding Table The usual tech suspects are looking to snag the NFL’s digital-streaming rights for “Thursday Night Football” for upcoming seasons, with Amazon, Google’s YouTube, Verizon and Twitter each on the short list of bidders, sources confirmed. The NFL is looking to cut a streaming deal for as long as five years for the “TNF” digital rights, as first reported by Bloomberg. The league sees value in carving up the 11-game Thursday night set — in addition to the five-year Fox broadcast deal it struck last month — with a global digital distributor that can enhance the telecasts with social extensions and interactive overlays, to reach younger audiences. Twitter, Amazon and YouTube have been in the “Thursday Night Football” bidding mix for the last several years. Verizon also is looking to nab global digital multiplatform rights to the Thursday games, as first reported by Recode; that comes after the telco inked a five-year pact for nonexclusive U.S. mobile rights to stream NFL regular- and post-season games. Facebook, which has bid for NFL live games in the past, earlier dropped out of the latest cycle of “Thursday Night Football” negotiators. Amazon won the “Thursday Night Football” digital derby last season, after Twitter had them a year earlier. Amazon’s Prime Video drew 18.4 million total viewers in 224 countries and territories for the NFL games. Amazon’s average-minute audience watching the NFL games for at least 30 seconds topped 310,000, 17% higher than Twitter’s results the season prior. The talks for ancillary “TNF” digital rights continue after Fox reached a five-year deal last month with the league for the Thursday night package, under which it is said to be paying more than $650 million per year. According to the NFL, Amazon’s Prime Video streaming in 2017 boosted overall consumption of “TNF” by about 2.5%. “In a world where people are trying to drive as much incremental consumption as possible, this is a small but growing asset for us,” NFL senior VP of digital media Vishal Shah said at an industry conference last fall. The NFL, Amazon, YouTube, Twitter and Verizon declined to comment on the latest “TNF” bidding. The jockeying for “Thursday Night Football” streaming rights is a microcosm of the larger incursion by technology companies into the sports-media world. Observers expect that within a few years, a major streaming platform will steal a bucket of premium rights from a TV broadcaster. That hasn’t happened yet, but digital players have been nibbling around the edges. Last month, YouTube TV struck a deal with Los Angeles Football Club for exclusive L.A.-area broadcast rights, a Major League Soccer expansion team that will begin competing in the 2018 season. ------------- But, but, but RATINGS!
Posts: 88,960

02-18-2018, 02:29 PM	#413
Valiant Valiant 'The Thread Killer' Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Kansas City Casino cash: $6102380	Surprised Netflix is not involved. They could do a NFL on Netflix stand alone or add on feature. Include the game, then test backlog of games, maybe select your favorite teams.
Posts: 18,393

02-27-2018, 04:37 PM	#415
Discuss Thrower "You like to drink?" Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: "I like to drink." Casino cash: $2706869	Papa John's is killing its official NFL sponsorship deal. We will shift our marketing from the broader NFL sponsorship" to focus on specific teams and players, Papa John's CEO Steve Ritchie said in a call with investors on Tuesday. Papa John's and the NFL said in a statement that they made a "mutual decision" to end the pizza chain's official league sponsorship deal. On Tuesday, Papa John's reported that system-wide comparable sales dropped 3.9% in North America in the fourth quarter. Executives said that "negative consumer sentiment" contributed to the sales slump. __________________ Chiefs 2016 Opponents: Home: JAX, TEN, NO, TB, NYJ. Away: HOU, IND, ATL, CAR, PIT Chiefs 2017 Opponents: Home: BUF, MIA, PHI, WSH, AFC North. Away: NE, NYJ, NYG, DAL, AFC South
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02-27-2018, 04:44 PM	#416
ToxSocks Needs more middle fingers Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: San Diego Casino cash: $3874563	Now that Marcus Peters is traded i fully expect to see a bump in Chiefs TV viewership. EDIT that was sarcasm btw __________________ Life is like a dick. Sometimes it gets hard for no reason, but it can't stay hard forever.
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02-27-2018, 07:52 PM	#420
MarkDavis'Haircut MVP Join Date: Aug 2017 Casino cash: $4670400	The ratings hit a peak a couple of years ago but the real decline lies in how boring the games are getting. The product is suffering. Too many bullshit flags, defenses are castrated and the games take forever.
Posts: 14,153