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The average audience for a 2017 regular season NFL game was 14.9 million, down 9.7% from 16.5 million in 2016. In comparison, the average viewership for an NFL game dropped 8% YoY in 2016.
Advertisers, the folks who actually pay the networks money that ends up going into the salary cap, don't care about "relative to general TV viewership". They care about how many people get exposed to their products. Fewer people watching football means lower return on their investment.
I wonder if anyone knows how many people are actually watching football games. There are so many ways to watch games now and I'm not certain that it is possible to track it all.
How many people watch condensed games on NFL Gamepass instead of live? Does that revenue count when determining the salary cap?
Games show up on youtube, how many people watch those instead of network broadcasts? Does any revenue from that go towards the cap?
When Rams games are broadcast in St. Louis, I generally set my DVR and then don't start watching until an hour into the game so I can FF through the commercials. How does that affect the value of the game to advertisers?
When it is not locally broadcast, I watch games on the grey market that stream the games from a network feed. I can't FF through the adds, so how do the advertisers know I am seeing their adds and how do they calculate that into their ROI?
Sure is complicated.
