Superbowl ratings lowest since 2009(update)

[mikecubs]

Ratings for NFL conference title games down 8 percent

More than 40 million people watched the NFL's two preliminaries for the Super Bowl on Sunday, a drop of more than 8 percent compared to last year's conference championship games.

The Nielsen company said an average of 43.2 million people watched the games. While that's down from the 47.1 million who watched the conference championships last year, it was better news for the NFL than the league had gotten only a week earlier. This year's divisional championship round had seen a 16 percent dip in audience size.

Night games generally do better in the ratings than afternoon contests, but not last weekend. The New England-Jacksonville contest that ended around dinnertime on the East Coast was a more competitive game featuring a marquee quarterback in Tom Brady. That game reached 44.1 million, compared to the 42.3 million who watched Philadelphia blow out Minnesota on Sunday night, Nielsen reported.


The star power of Tom Brady wasn't enough to prevent a ratings drop for this year's NFL conference championship games. AP Photo/Charles Krupa
After seeing viewership erosion all year, the NFL will be anxious to see whether the trend extends to the secular holiday of Super Bowl Sunday on Feb. 4. The Super Bowl is the most-watched television event each year.

With a prime-time football game, Fox won the week by averaging 10.6 million viewers. CBS had 6.9 million, ABC had 4.74 million, NBC had 4.69 million, the CW had 1.53 million, Univision had 1.47 million, ION Television had 1.3 million and Telemundo had 1.2 million.

Despite the year-to-year ratings dip, Fox's NFC Championship Game telecast package still comprised the top three shows for the week of Jan. 15-21.

www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/22190769/ratings-nfl-conference-championship-games-8-percent-last-year

[mikecubs]

NFL can't survive many more seasons like this one. Should it?

National Anthem protests and political backlash. Startling research and heartbreaking stories about the long-term impact of head injuries. Squabbling among National Football League owners and their management team. Long replay reviews involving rules no one seems to understand anymore. The apathy for games on Thursday nights in America and Sunday mornings in London.

The New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles collide in the Super Bowl on Sunday (Feb. 4) to close out what has been the most challenging season for the NFL in decades. And no matter who wins, there is plenty of evidence that the league's problems are only beginning. Not a full-blown decline just yet, but signs that America's most popular sport may be entering its twilight years.

A poll released Friday from The Wall Street Journal and NBC News had some truly depressing findings for the league and its fans. The survey of 900 adults interviewed Jan. 13-17, showed that adults who report following the NFL closely has dropped 9% since 2014. Even worse, just 51% of men aged 18 to 49 say they follow the NFL closely, a massive drop from 75% barely four years ago. The poll did not ask respondents why their interest changed.[/u]

This is a demographic that should represent the present and the future of the league.

Micah Roberts, a Republican pollster who helped conduct the poll along with Democratic pollster Fred Yang, told The Wall Street Journal that from the NFL's perspective, this is "absolutely the last group you would want to retreat."

"If I'm the NFL I'm freaking out about that a little bit," Roberts said. "They are the very core of the football-viewing audience. If they're retreating, then who's left?"


President Donald Trump and others want to blame the drop-off on players taking a knee during the National Anthem. But the poll showed that the fading enthusiasm crossed political lines. Base Democrats who follow the league closely fell by 16 points versus four years ago, while it was 14 points for base Republicans.

Dwindling interest in the NFL also is reflected in a two-year drop in TV ratings, the source of 60 percent of the league's revenue. The average audience for a game this season was 14.9 million, down 9.7% when compared with 16.5 million viewers for the 2016 regular season, according to Nielsen ratings. That is a steeper decline than the 8% viewership erosion last year.

National Football League officials have blamed the decline on a variety of factors, including last year's attention-sucking presidential campaign and the larger trend of people moving away from traditional television to get their entertainment on other devices.

But there are real signs of existential problems, and none more important than the safety of the game.

Advancing medical research into how concussions and even milder head trauma can aggregate into degenerative brain disease -- CTE, ALS, Alzheimer's -- is being cited for a drop in youth participation in football. And more and more former NFL players and their families are telling agonizing stories of what the game has done to them.


Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre, famous for his enthusiasm and exuberant love for the sport told the Washington Post that, "I cringe when I see video, or I'm driving and I see little kids out playing, and they're all decked out in their football gear and the helmet looks like it's three times bigger than they are. It's kind of funny, but it's not as funny now as it was years ago, because of what we know now. I just cringe seeing a fragile little boy get tackled and the people ooh and ahh and they just don't know. Or they don't care. It's just so scary."

The wife of former Saints player Rob Kelly had a powerful op-ed in the New York Times on Sunday under the headline "I'm the Wife of a Former N.F.L. Player. Football Destroyed His Mind." Emily Kelly echoed Favre's view of how the new medical information has transformed the way that many of us look at a game we once loved.

"But when all those big hits happened and the fans cheered, did they cheer despite knowing a man just greatly increased his risk for dementia?" she asks. "Was anyone worried about an A.L.S. diagnosis or a C.T.E.-related suicide at 40 after their favorite player suffered repeated blows to the head on the field? No, they cheered and they celebrated because they didn't know. And neither did we."


League officials no doubt are hoping for an exciting Super Bowl LII to end a turbulent season on a positive note. They might have to settle for simply closing the books on a down year and hoping to hit the reset button.

That will be a lot harder than a lot of people think. This is not about who stands or who kneels. It's about whether we can watch these games in good conscience, knowing what we know now.

www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2018/02/nfl_super_bowl_failings.html

[mikecubs]

NBC's Super Bowl telecast draws 103.4 million viewers, tumbling 7% to lowest level since 2009

An exciting upset victory in Super Bowl LII could not prevent NBC's telecast of Sunday's game from dropping for the third straight year and hitting a nine-year low.

An audience of 103.4 million TV viewers watched the Philadelphia Eagles win their first Super Bowl ever with their 41-33 victory over the favored New England Patriots, according to Nielsen, a 7% decline from last year for TV's biggest annual event.

www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-super-bowl-ratings-20180205-story.html