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Ratings conundrum

— In the U.S., NFL ratings and attendance are down. Some of that may indeed be about political angles taken both by the pro-Trump crowd but also by the anti-corporate crowd.

And it doesn’t help that a whole bunch of big teams had bad years.

But the overall picture remains the issue. Fewer people are watching both live and at home.

But at the same time,ESPN’s overall ratings are up.

I asked local sports marketing guru Tom Mayenknecht for his thoughts on the whole thing:

“NFL TV numbers are down two years running and that’s certainly an eye-opener for a league that has seen uninterrupted growth in its television viewership for almost two decades. But it’s also the result of a perfect storm of contributing factors ranging from a poor on-field product and questionable officiating to the silent sideline protests and a political environment that is drawing people away from games and to 24-hour news channels. And as millennials and now Generation Z teenagers making up a larger part of the overall audience, they’re moving from conventional television to video streaming on their smart phones and tablets. That’s breaking up the ratings as more consume on their mobile devices.”

“But just as the NFL is down, college football appears heading up and that has benefitted ESPN, which has Monday Night Football and one NFL playoff game but many, many more college football and bowl games in its lineup. Even in this era of cord-cutting, ESPN continues to do well with live sports such as NBA basketball and tennis and special events such as the X Games.”