Why Is There a NFL Ratings Crisis? Look No Further Than London, Thursday Games
|
|
Why Is There a NFL Ratings Crisis? Look No Further Than London, Thursday Games
By Mike Tanier , NFL National Lead Writer Oct 20, 2016
It's 6:30 on Sunday morning, Angelenos. Do you know where your new NFL team is?
Why, it is kicking off in Merry Olde England, of course. The NFL allowed the Rams to return to Los Angeles and figured the best ways to engage a new generation of fans were to: A) take away a home date, and
schedule back-to-back October games in the morning, local time. Last week's Lions game began before the sports taverns fired up their grills. Sunday's Giants game kicks off before the monsignor even wakes up.
The Rams were shipped across eight time zones to play the comic foil to Odell Beckham, whose mission is to entice international fans to buy Odell Beckham jerseys without doing anything that would get him penalized, like express an emotion. Europeans love watching Americans get weirdly Puritanical!
But hey, football fans can enjoy the novelty of waking up to images of Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, the only Big Ben they will see this weekend and other B-reel from the educational video Preschoolers' Guide to World Monuments. We saw it all three weeks ago. We will see it again next week when the Redskins face the Bengals. It's nothing to put off cleaning the gutters for.
At least the Thursday night game looks like a gem: Packers vs. Bears, one of the greatest rivalries in American professional sports! Unfortunately, the Bears lineup looks like it was taken from the third quarter of the first preseason game, and even Aaron Rodgers needs a good stiff belt before watching Aaron Rodgers play these days. Both teams have injury reports the length of Pixar movie credits. If these teams bored and frustrated you on Sunday, imagine what kind of show they will put on after four days' rest.
Television ratings have dipped. Fan enthusiasm seems to be at an all-time low. The reason why is simple: The NFL's "showcase" games showcase the league at its absolute worst.
It's not your imagination: These games really stink.
Weak Tea and Stale Crumpets
Since 2011, the average London game has pitted a team arriving with a 3-3 record against one with a 1-4 record (2.9-and-2.6 versus 1.3-and-4.1, to be precise). So the NFL is basing an international marketing effort on mediocre teams facing bad ones.
The bad records of the London teams are not the result of bad luck, just bad design. Teams are scheduled in London according to a catch-as-catch-can labyrinth of agreements and compromises. The Jaguars are booked there through 2020. The Rams will rack up frequent-flyer miles for three years until their new stadium is built. Meanwhile, the Patriots quietly bowed out of a three-year London arrangement after pounding the Rams 45-7 in 2012.
So the NFL doesn't start by saying, "How can we introduce international fans to Cam Newton or Ezekiel Elliott?" It collects teams whose ownership has soccer connections (Rams, Jaguars, Buccaneers), teams that owe the league relocation favors (Rams, Raiders soon) and small-market teams willing to trade home games for a sliver of worldwide brand recognition (Jaguars). The tired, poor and huddled masses, in other words.
No wonder the games are such a slog. The average final score of London games since 2011 is 34-18. Some games are blowouts, like the Patriots-Rams game and the 45-10 pounding the Chiefs gave the Lions last year. But even the close games often have a sloppy, bottom-division-Conference USA matchup quality about them. Which is a nice way of saying they are Jaguars games. The Jags have taken 17-point leads over the Bills and Colts in London over the last two years, only to allow late comebacks. If watching one of the worst teams in the NFL blow two-touchdown leads is your thing, London football is jolly good.
Head coaches Dennis Allen (Raiders) and Joe Philbin (Dolphins) were both fired after London losses in 2014 and 2015. Post-London firings are bound to keep happening as long as the NFL keeps adding the strain of an overseas trip (short practice weeks, long injury reports) to already shaky franchises. The firings turn the London games into creepy reality shows that we watch to see who gets voted off the island. At least we know Jeff Fisher's job is safe, because he's going to survive to become President Snow in The Hunger Games.
Despite the poor quality of the games, the London series keeps expanding: There will be a minimum of five of them by 2018, one of which will be a Jaguars game, and another is likely to be a Rams game (the Rams are committed to international games, not London games). But hey, maybe by 2018 the Jaguars will actually be good and West Coast fans will be ready to wake up at 6:30 in the morning to see Jared Goff's debut start.
Must-Plead TV
Here are a couple of bullet points about the sorry state of Thursday Night Football:
The quarterback star power of the Thursday games is severely lacking this year. The six games entering Thursday's Bears-Packers game featured 12 starting quarterbacks who won a combined seven career playoff games: three by Cam Newton, four by Philip Rivers, zero by the other 10 starters. Rodgers brings the total to 14, with Brian Hoyer chipping in zero. Again, this is by design: The NFL knew Peyton Manning and Tom Brady would not be playing on Thursday night when it scheduled three early-season appearances by the Broncos and Patriots.
Since the start of the 2014 season, the average score of Thursday night games is 29-16. Like the London games, the Thursday-nighters are a mix of blowouts and goofy AFC South extravaganzas, mixed with an all-too-common type of game endemic to Thursday nights in which the favored team painfully pulls away on a bunch of field goals. (Watch the Bengals' 22-7 win over the Dolphins in late September for an example if you are really, truly bored).
Since the start of the 2014 season, only five Thursday night games featured a matchup between a pair of eventual playoff teams: last year's Patriots-Steelers opener, Broncos-Chiefs and Cardinals-Vikings. Things aren't shaping up well for this season's matchups so far. Only Patriots-Texans looks like any kind of playoff preview, and since the Patriots won 27-0 without Brady, it's hard to calculate what they would do to the Texans with him if they meet in January.
Like the London games, the Thursday-nighters are a built-in schedule disruption that all but guarantees that both teams will arrive at well below full strength. We long ago crossed the event horizon when the NFL pretended to care about the toll these games take on the players. But perhaps the league cares about the toll the games take on its product.
The Patriots had to get Jacoby Brissett ready on short rest. The Cardinals had to rely on Drew Stanton with Carson Palmer concussed. The Broncos were without head coach Gary Kubiak due to an attack of migraines, for heaven's sake.
The Packers, who have all of the star power in Thursday night's matchup, enter the game reeling from a loss, coping with multiple injuries and badly in need of some offensive fine tuning that cannot be done in three days. The stage is set for one of the NFL's biggest stars to look as bad as he possibly can on national television. Maybe that's good news for Bears fans. The rest of us are just expecting the Packers to win on a bunch of field goals.
Oversaturated and Disengaged
Thursday Night Football gets competitive television ratings and generates revenue. London football generates revenue (though not profits) and real international interest. Football in Mexico City (in November) and China (someday, possibly) will do the same. Monday Night Football—once the NFL's prize claim to American cultural relevance, now the football equivalent of a jam band stretching the encore a little too far—still generates revenue.
The NFL's ratings are down, but they are still higher and more reliable than any other program or sporting event. The NFL could schedule Browns-Titans games on Tuesdays at noon, and broadcast partners would battle for the right to televise them.
But there is more to running a sports league than making money. Seriously.
Kevin Clark of The Ringer investigated the NFL's sudden ratings drop and found a surprising result: The same number of viewers are tuning in for NFL games as in years past, but they are tuning in for an average of five fewer minutes per game. So fans switch the game on, then switch it off when things get boring because Stanton or Brissett is the quarterback, the Bengals settle for another field goal or the Jaguars lead by 17 points and the pancakes are ready.
In the marketing business, they call that viewer engagement. It's the difference between a police procedural with outstanding television ratings (appealing to your parents, asleep in the Barcaloungers) and an edgy cable drama that has everyone podcasting around the water cooler. Advertisers have figured out the difference between highly engaged viewers (the kind likely to associate their favorite shows with their brands) and channel flippers. Thursday night games, London mornings and even Monday Night Football have become so dull and perfunctory that they beg for disengaged channel flipping.
Clark's sources suggested that oversaturation is the problem. Well, yeah. There's only so much Beckham-Brady-Newton to go around. The league's latest initiatives, from limiting GIFs to penalizing the most benign end-zone celebrations, will do the exact opposite of engaging fans or generating new superstars, but the NFL has not figured that out, because it's run by folks of the fall-asleep-in-front-of-police-procedurals demographic.
And the league isn't going to constrict its Thursday or overseas schedules. The league is still trying to get traction behind a trip to China in 2018. It will probably send the Raiders and Rams. Maybe Fisher can negotiate an all-new detente while he's there. He's unlikely to coach an exciting football game.
Maybe trading a few ratings points for jersey sales in Beijing sounds like a good idea. But diluting your product is never a smart move. The NFL keeps adding revenue by adding water. Viewers are tasting the difference and sampling other programming. We still wake up ready for some football on Sundays. But not at dawn, and not when the game is almost purposely terrible.
[bleacherreport.com]
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/20/2016 01:27PM by MamaRAMa.
By Mike Tanier , NFL National Lead Writer Oct 20, 2016
It's 6:30 on Sunday morning, Angelenos. Do you know where your new NFL team is?
Why, it is kicking off in Merry Olde England, of course. The NFL allowed the Rams to return to Los Angeles and figured the best ways to engage a new generation of fans were to: A) take away a home date, and
schedule back-to-back October games in the morning, local time. Last week's Lions game began before the sports taverns fired up their grills. Sunday's Giants game kicks off before the monsignor even wakes up.The Rams were shipped across eight time zones to play the comic foil to Odell Beckham, whose mission is to entice international fans to buy Odell Beckham jerseys without doing anything that would get him penalized, like express an emotion. Europeans love watching Americans get weirdly Puritanical!
But hey, football fans can enjoy the novelty of waking up to images of Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, the only Big Ben they will see this weekend and other B-reel from the educational video Preschoolers' Guide to World Monuments. We saw it all three weeks ago. We will see it again next week when the Redskins face the Bengals. It's nothing to put off cleaning the gutters for.
At least the Thursday night game looks like a gem: Packers vs. Bears, one of the greatest rivalries in American professional sports! Unfortunately, the Bears lineup looks like it was taken from the third quarter of the first preseason game, and even Aaron Rodgers needs a good stiff belt before watching Aaron Rodgers play these days. Both teams have injury reports the length of Pixar movie credits. If these teams bored and frustrated you on Sunday, imagine what kind of show they will put on after four days' rest.
Television ratings have dipped. Fan enthusiasm seems to be at an all-time low. The reason why is simple: The NFL's "showcase" games showcase the league at its absolute worst.
It's not your imagination: These games really stink.
Weak Tea and Stale Crumpets
Since 2011, the average London game has pitted a team arriving with a 3-3 record against one with a 1-4 record (2.9-and-2.6 versus 1.3-and-4.1, to be precise). So the NFL is basing an international marketing effort on mediocre teams facing bad ones.
The bad records of the London teams are not the result of bad luck, just bad design. Teams are scheduled in London according to a catch-as-catch-can labyrinth of agreements and compromises. The Jaguars are booked there through 2020. The Rams will rack up frequent-flyer miles for three years until their new stadium is built. Meanwhile, the Patriots quietly bowed out of a three-year London arrangement after pounding the Rams 45-7 in 2012.
So the NFL doesn't start by saying, "How can we introduce international fans to Cam Newton or Ezekiel Elliott?" It collects teams whose ownership has soccer connections (Rams, Jaguars, Buccaneers), teams that owe the league relocation favors (Rams, Raiders soon) and small-market teams willing to trade home games for a sliver of worldwide brand recognition (Jaguars). The tired, poor and huddled masses, in other words.
No wonder the games are such a slog. The average final score of London games since 2011 is 34-18. Some games are blowouts, like the Patriots-Rams game and the 45-10 pounding the Chiefs gave the Lions last year. But even the close games often have a sloppy, bottom-division-Conference USA matchup quality about them. Which is a nice way of saying they are Jaguars games. The Jags have taken 17-point leads over the Bills and Colts in London over the last two years, only to allow late comebacks. If watching one of the worst teams in the NFL blow two-touchdown leads is your thing, London football is jolly good.
Head coaches Dennis Allen (Raiders) and Joe Philbin (Dolphins) were both fired after London losses in 2014 and 2015. Post-London firings are bound to keep happening as long as the NFL keeps adding the strain of an overseas trip (short practice weeks, long injury reports) to already shaky franchises. The firings turn the London games into creepy reality shows that we watch to see who gets voted off the island. At least we know Jeff Fisher's job is safe, because he's going to survive to become President Snow in The Hunger Games.
Despite the poor quality of the games, the London series keeps expanding: There will be a minimum of five of them by 2018, one of which will be a Jaguars game, and another is likely to be a Rams game (the Rams are committed to international games, not London games). But hey, maybe by 2018 the Jaguars will actually be good and West Coast fans will be ready to wake up at 6:30 in the morning to see Jared Goff's debut start.
Must-Plead TV
Here are a couple of bullet points about the sorry state of Thursday Night Football:
The quarterback star power of the Thursday games is severely lacking this year. The six games entering Thursday's Bears-Packers game featured 12 starting quarterbacks who won a combined seven career playoff games: three by Cam Newton, four by Philip Rivers, zero by the other 10 starters. Rodgers brings the total to 14, with Brian Hoyer chipping in zero. Again, this is by design: The NFL knew Peyton Manning and Tom Brady would not be playing on Thursday night when it scheduled three early-season appearances by the Broncos and Patriots.
Since the start of the 2014 season, the average score of Thursday night games is 29-16. Like the London games, the Thursday-nighters are a mix of blowouts and goofy AFC South extravaganzas, mixed with an all-too-common type of game endemic to Thursday nights in which the favored team painfully pulls away on a bunch of field goals. (Watch the Bengals' 22-7 win over the Dolphins in late September for an example if you are really, truly bored).
Since the start of the 2014 season, only five Thursday night games featured a matchup between a pair of eventual playoff teams: last year's Patriots-Steelers opener, Broncos-Chiefs and Cardinals-Vikings. Things aren't shaping up well for this season's matchups so far. Only Patriots-Texans looks like any kind of playoff preview, and since the Patriots won 27-0 without Brady, it's hard to calculate what they would do to the Texans with him if they meet in January.
Like the London games, the Thursday-nighters are a built-in schedule disruption that all but guarantees that both teams will arrive at well below full strength. We long ago crossed the event horizon when the NFL pretended to care about the toll these games take on the players. But perhaps the league cares about the toll the games take on its product.
The Patriots had to get Jacoby Brissett ready on short rest. The Cardinals had to rely on Drew Stanton with Carson Palmer concussed. The Broncos were without head coach Gary Kubiak due to an attack of migraines, for heaven's sake.
The Packers, who have all of the star power in Thursday night's matchup, enter the game reeling from a loss, coping with multiple injuries and badly in need of some offensive fine tuning that cannot be done in three days. The stage is set for one of the NFL's biggest stars to look as bad as he possibly can on national television. Maybe that's good news for Bears fans. The rest of us are just expecting the Packers to win on a bunch of field goals.
Oversaturated and Disengaged
Thursday Night Football gets competitive television ratings and generates revenue. London football generates revenue (though not profits) and real international interest. Football in Mexico City (in November) and China (someday, possibly) will do the same. Monday Night Football—once the NFL's prize claim to American cultural relevance, now the football equivalent of a jam band stretching the encore a little too far—still generates revenue.
The NFL's ratings are down, but they are still higher and more reliable than any other program or sporting event. The NFL could schedule Browns-Titans games on Tuesdays at noon, and broadcast partners would battle for the right to televise them.
But there is more to running a sports league than making money. Seriously.
Kevin Clark of The Ringer investigated the NFL's sudden ratings drop and found a surprising result: The same number of viewers are tuning in for NFL games as in years past, but they are tuning in for an average of five fewer minutes per game. So fans switch the game on, then switch it off when things get boring because Stanton or Brissett is the quarterback, the Bengals settle for another field goal or the Jaguars lead by 17 points and the pancakes are ready.
In the marketing business, they call that viewer engagement. It's the difference between a police procedural with outstanding television ratings (appealing to your parents, asleep in the Barcaloungers) and an edgy cable drama that has everyone podcasting around the water cooler. Advertisers have figured out the difference between highly engaged viewers (the kind likely to associate their favorite shows with their brands) and channel flippers. Thursday night games, London mornings and even Monday Night Football have become so dull and perfunctory that they beg for disengaged channel flipping.
Clark's sources suggested that oversaturation is the problem. Well, yeah. There's only so much Beckham-Brady-Newton to go around. The league's latest initiatives, from limiting GIFs to penalizing the most benign end-zone celebrations, will do the exact opposite of engaging fans or generating new superstars, but the NFL has not figured that out, because it's run by folks of the fall-asleep-in-front-of-police-procedurals demographic.
And the league isn't going to constrict its Thursday or overseas schedules. The league is still trying to get traction behind a trip to China in 2018. It will probably send the Raiders and Rams. Maybe Fisher can negotiate an all-new detente while he's there. He's unlikely to coach an exciting football game.
Maybe trading a few ratings points for jersey sales in Beijing sounds like a good idea. But diluting your product is never a smart move. The NFL keeps adding revenue by adding water. Viewers are tasting the difference and sampling other programming. We still wake up ready for some football on Sundays. But not at dawn, and not when the game is almost purposely terrible.
[bleacherreport.com]
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/20/2016 01:27PM by MamaRAMa.
