NFL ratings haven’t gone down, but what’s the reason they stay strong? 
It’s easy to rage about how the NFL’s negative headlines are going to have a serious impact on the league, but that’s just hot air that passes the time between games.
The league is doing fine, even after a ton of talk has centered on domestic violence and concussions recently. The one key area in which you’d see a dip is television ratings, and they’re as strong as ever.
The MMQB’s Richard Deitsch examined the NFL’s ratings and found that as a whole, they’re as strong as ever. Ratings for “Thursday Night Football,” with the CBS bump, are way up. “Monday Night Football” ratings are up. Numbers for Fox and CBS are down, but slightly. Check out his whole column for the breakdown. There’s some good insight into the mechanics of NFL ratings.
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Unless you really bought into the hot takes that the NFL was going to fall off the face of the earth because of Ray Rice, the ratings being strong shouldn’t surprise you. But what struck me from Deitsch’s story was a comment from Amanda Lotz, an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan, about why the NFL’s television ratings stay strong no matter what.
“We might think of people as NFL fans, but they are really fans of a team, not the League,” Lotz said. “There may be real discontent with the actions of the league or the actions of a player, but it is a difficult move to deny fanship of a team as a result. We are Chiefs or Steelers fans, not NFL fans. The dynamics between team and individual sports is also a consideration. Though we may have fondness for particular players, that’s not what draws us in the case of the NFL either.”
Lotz goes onto say that the family ritual of watching a favorite team together overrides whatever the league’s issues are. While those reasons are strong and I respect where she’s coming from, I don’t agree. I think the NFL’s massive popularity comes from being the opposite of what Lotz describes.
The other major leagues are what she describes. Fans are into their favorite teams in other sports more than the league as a whole. People will watch the Los Angeles Dodgers but probably not some Cardinals-Cubs game on national TV. They’re Knicks fans, or maybe will watch when LeBron James plays or get into the NBA come playoff time, but aren’t subscribing to NBA League Pass to watch how Portland and Golden State are doing after everyone else has gone to bed. Some do, but it’s a small minority.
The NFL’s appeal goes well beyond that, at least based on my interactions with people. They’ll obviously watch their favorite team, but they also want to watch Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers on “Sunday Night Football” even with no specific rooting interest. Fantasy football, and to a lesser extent gambling (yes, Roger, it exists and it’s helping your league tremendously), are the drivers of that, as is the relatively short schedule that creates urgency with every game.
You don’t get 18.8 million viewers for the Cowboys-Redskins on Monday night, the ninth-highest cable broadcast of all-time excluding breaking news according to The MMQB, just on Redskins and Cowboys fans. There are a ton of fans who would watch any two teams play, or at very least tune in to see if Dez Bryant can get the 15 points they need to win their fantasy game. That has made the NFL so much more popular than the other sports. There’s a reason the Saints-Packers game, between the smallest and third-smallest markets in the NFL, beat Game 5 of the World Series in the ratings. The Lions-Falcons game that was shown at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday did a more than respectable 6.6 rating. People like watching football no matter if their favorite team is playing (and, the argument can be made that for fans of a certain age their favorite team is “My Fantasy Team”). The sport itself is a ritual, every Sunday through the fall.
But that’s not a scientific study, just my opinion based on anecdotal evidence. Why do you watch?
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
