Why NFL Ratings Are Plummeting: A Two-Part Theory
Every year, the story of the Super Bowl is partly a story of its gargantuan audience. Of the 20 most-watched TV broadcasts in U.S. history, 19 are Super Bowls. (The other one is the series finale of M*A*S*H.)
But this superlative legacy is in tension with an equal and opposite force: the steady collapse in NFL viewership. The size of the league’s average per-game audience has declined by about 17 percent since 2015, an astonishing fall for the crown jewel of pay TV.
To explain the mystery of cascading football ratings, observers have pointed to the election and Donald Trump’s nonstop antics for pulling viewers’ attention from football to the presidential campaigns. Last year, they players’ protests and the president’s relentless tweeting. But now evidence is mounting that the NFL’s problems are deeper than political story lines and social-media distractions.
