Feature Photo By: Jack Dempsey – Demaryius Thomas stands on the sideline, waiting for the game to transition to the offense. Views are down in Monday Night Football games by 24%.
Is the NFL losing viewers interest in the sport? Football has recently had a decline in views. NFL’s Monday Night Football has had the greatest decline by the number of views decreasing 24% since last year according to The MMQB. There are a few reasons why this has happened.
A big reason is the matchups, such as teams with poor records being broadcasted on prime time, that some people may not want to see. Also, the 49er’s quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s protests have had a big enough effect to stop 32% of people from watching football all together, shown by a survey taken by Forbes.com.
This shows a pie chart of all the time spent in game. Only 11 minutes of the 3 hour broadcast is actual game play.
According to sophomore Kenneth Casias, “the match-ups are just bad. Last Thursday when the Ravens and Browns played, it was just a horrible game.”
One other reason is the length of games. According to a study performed by The Wall Street Journal, the average time for an NFL games is roughly 3 hours and 12 minutes, with only 11 minutes spent on live action. The other three hours and one minute are spent on commercials, shots of the coach, the crowd, and cheerleaders. Out of the three hours and 12 minutes, one hour and three minutes is spent on commercials.
Sophomore Daniel Weston said, “the commercials take up too much time to the point that I’d rather look on the ESPN app to see the final score and quickly watch an 8 minute highlight video.”
Another reason that viewing numbers have decreased is that it is easier to look at the final score and highlights than watching the actual game.
With all the things the NFL has come out with (like NFL Redzone on the NFL Network), many do not see the point in watching the games. NFL Redzone shows all the highlights of all the games that were played that week.
Due to the advancement of technology and social media combined with the lack of patience for advertising, NFL viewership has gone down significantly. This causing some people to lose interest in the sport and entertainment as a whole.
To get more information on when to watch games or how to stream games, visit:
