Super Bowl viewership plunges​ to lowest in 15 years; posts worst rating since 1969



Sunday's Super Bowl between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs capped off a disappointing financial year for the National Football League by posting the worst viewership for a championship game in 15 years and ratings among the worst ever.

According to figures released Tuesday by CBS Sports, America's biggest broadcast event garnered a total audience of 96.4 million viewers on Sunday night, a stark 5% drop-off from last year's Super Bowl on Fox and well below the 114.4 million audience that tuned in for the most-watched Super Bowl in 2015, Deadline reported.

The big game was the first in more than a decade that failed to attract more than 100 million viewers and was the least-watched Super Bowl since 2007, when 93.18 million tuned in to watch the Indianapolis Colts defeat the Chicago Bears. In fact, if the viewership hadn't been buoyed by the largest-ever cohort of 5.7 million online streamers, ratings would have been even worse.

Nielsen Media Research — the firm which handles TV viewership data — was uncharacteristically late in releasing data this time around, causing several to surmise that the delay signaled bad news for the game's figures was forthcoming. It appears they were right.

Nielsen's rating system, which goes beyond just viewership totals to score programming based on audience share and other metrics, was especially unkind to Sunday's event. According to Nielsen ratings compiled by Sports Media Watch, this year's game earned the lowest household rating (38.2) since 1969, when the league was just 3 years old.

In its report, Deadline noted that the poor showing isn't necessarily a surprise given the fact that ratings were down 10% all year. In December, the ratings plunge forced networks to slash ad prices and scramble to make advertisers happy. At the time the entertainment news outlet suggested that "backlash from some fans over the league's social justice efforts, including its embrace of Black Lives Matter," was a contributing factor.

But in its Tuesday report, Deadline suggested that the lopsided on-field action may have made matters even worse.

"Despite technical and cultural efforts to make the Covid-19 restrictions of Sunday's game a non-event, the action on the field was just not the kind of drama that sports analysts and CBS programmers were anticipating. Which, with two less than top market teams participating, likely saw a lot of viewers clicking elsewhere on the first Sunday of February as the outcome became obvious long before the game was over," the report stated.

The Buccaneers defeated the Chiefs 31-9 in the game.

Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images

NFL ratings plunge has TV networks slashing ad prices, scrambling to make advertisers happy



The TV ratings for the National Football League this year have been so bad that networks are reportedly slashing advertisement prices and giving away commercial time to keep advertisers happy.

"TV networks are feeling the strains of disappointing NFL ratings, as they are forced to restructure deals with advertisers to make up for the smaller audience, and their opportunity to make money off remaining games during the lucrative holiday season narrows," the Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend, calling the changes "unheard of."

"Some networks also have considered letting advertisers pay less for commercials during NFL games and other programming than they originally pledged," the report added.

The Journal also noted that a large amount of the commercial time still available for this season is being given away to advertisers to make up for the league's viewership underperformance so far this year. These types of arrangements, called "make-good commercials," are made when a network under-delivers on the audience it promised in the original agreement.

Apparently, networks have made so many of these arrangements that there is "little ad time" left to be sold as the league enters its final quarter of the season.

NFL games are normally the most lucrative TV events for networks because they gather the largest number of live audiences, something advertisers crave. So when viewership drops, it can leave networks scrambling.

According to Nielsen data, through the first 13 weeks of the season, TV and digital ratings were down 7% across the board from last year, with viewership in the 18-49 and 25-54 age demographics hit the hardest. Things were especially bad in Week 13, as viewership dropped 29% in comparison to the same time last year, and on Thanksgiving — normally a good time for the NFL — when viewership plummeted 50%.

Deadline listed longer-than-usual presidential election coverage, postponements caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and "backlash from some fans over the league's social justice efforts, including its embrace of Black Lives Matter," as contributing factors to the viewer erosion.

"Even as surefire as the NFL has been — and the last couple years, NFL ratings stood up much better than network prime-time ratings — we are now in a situation where the NFL is declining," Gibbs Haljun, the investment lead at ad-buying firm, Mindshare, told the Journal.

But one analyst noted that while things are bad, some context is needed.

"Even though they're down, the NFL's [ratings] are the envy of the industry more than ever," Dr. Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch said. "You're talking about a year when the NBA Finals averaged fewer than 8 million viewers, the World Series averaged fewer than 10 million viewers — and a Wednesday afternoon NFL game gets 10.8 million? And I'm supposed to be thinking the NFL's having a bad year?"

Brett Favre tells President Trump: 'Fans clearly do not want political messaging mixed with their sports'



Brett Favre has an idea why sports leagues are experiencing historically low TV ratings — politics.

President Donald Trump participated in a presidential election town hall event for Sinclair Broadcasting this week. During Wednesday's Q&A event that was hosted by political commentator Eric Bolling, Trump was greeted by his friend and golfing buddy Brett Favre.

The former Green Bay Packers star quarterback said it would be for the best to keep politics out of professional sports.

"The NBA and the NFL are struggling with lower ratings, as fans clearly do not want political messaging mixed with their sports," Favre said during the town hall, then asked, "So how should the leagues support and promote an anti-racism position without becoming political and alienating fans?"

Trump agreed with the Hall of Fame NFL QB.

"People don't want to see all of the politics," Trump replied. "They've got enough politics, with me and with everybody else. And they don't want to see it with football or sports, on Sunday or whenever they happen to be watching."

"I think it's had a huge impact on sports, a huge negative impact on sports," the president said. "And I think that football ought to get back to football and basketball to basketball. And let politics remain separate."

Trump noted that the NBA's ratings are "down 70%, more than that."

In September, Trump commented on the poor TV ratings that the NBA was experiencing.

"People are tired of watching the highly political @NBA," Trump tweeted. "Basketball ratings are WAY down, and they won't be coming back. I hope football and baseball are watching and learning because the same thing will be happening to them. Stand tall for our Country and our Flag!!!"

The NBA went hard in the paint with social justice messaging once the basketball league returned to after the suspended season because of the COVID-19 pandemic. During its bubble format regular season and playoffs at Disney World, "Black Lives Matter" was painted on the court, and players wore approved messages on their jerseys, such as "Power to the people," "I Can't Breathe," and "Anti-Racist."

The NBA Finals averaged only 7.45 million viewers during the six-game series this year, easily making it the least-watched Finals on record.

In the first week of the 2020 NBA playoffs, ESPN, ABC, and TNT averaged just 1.875 million viewers per game, TV ratings were down 20% compared to 2019.

Following the poorly-rated NBA Finals, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said that "Black Lives Matter" messages will likely not be displayed on the court or on players' jerseys next season.

NFL ratings were down 10% through the first four weeks of this season.

Game 1 of the Rays-Dodgers World Series had the worst TV ratings of all-time.

Gallup: Americans' opinion of the sports industry has plummeted in the past year



Americans' opinion of the sports industry has plunged in the past year, according to a recent Gallup poll. Of the 25 U.S. industry sectors examined, only the federal government (-20) and the pharmaceutical industry (-15) had a worse net negative rating than the sports industry (-10). In fact, more people had a very positive or somewhat positive view on pharmaceuticals (34) than the sports industry (30).

A two-week polling sample from August 2019 was compared to a two-week sample in August 2020, and Americans' opinion of the sports industry declined drastically. There was a drop of 15 points in people who had a very or somewhat positive view of the sports industry, which edged out the travel industry that fell 11 points for the bottom spot.

Based on the recent survey of 1,031 American adults, only 30% of people view the sports industry in a positive light, compared to 40% of Americans who have a negative point of view. In 2019, 45% of Americans held positive feelings for the sports industry and only 25% viewed it negatively.

The nosedive in favorability comes as sports leagues have embraced social justice movements, including Black Lives Matter. The backlash is evident in political bases with positive views from Republicans crashing from +11 in 2019 to -35 in 2020, a devastating 46-point drop. Independents are also shunning sports; going from +26 in 2019 to -10 in 2020, a significant 36-point decrease. Democrats saw a slight decrease from +16 positive rating to a +11 rating.

Non-whites Americans' positive opinions of the sports industry plummeted from +51 last year to only +16 this year, a 35-point decline. White Americans went from +4 in 2019 to -22 in 2020, a 26-point drop in positive outlook.

"Sports has been acutely affected by the twin events steering news and culture in 2020: the pandemic and the renewed movement for racial justice," Gallup wrote. "The sports industry's relationship with fans has been disrupted by the need to shrink its seasons and schedules and play to empty venues as a means of keeping fans and players safe."

"At the same time, the greater social and political activism of players and, in some cases now, coaching staffs and entire leagues appears to have turned off Americans who disagree with their messages or the way they express them," the article read. "The net effect at this point has been negative for the industry's image."

TV ratings also show fans' frustrations in sports this year. The NFL suffered a double-digit ratings drop for its season opener that featured an overwhelming amount of social justice activism.

NBA ratings are down 20% during the playoffs. One poll found that 38% of fans are not watching the NBA because it's "too political."

GO WOKE, GO BROKE: NFL sees double-digit ratings drop for season opener loaded with social justice activism



The NFL's season-opening game between the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and the Houston Texans drew disappointing TV ratings fueling continued questions about whether increased political activism in sports is driving fans away.

Preliminary Nielsen ratings show that 16.4 million people tuned in to the Thursday night primetime game, which is a 16% decrease from the number of people who watched last season's opener between the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears.

Ratings in professional sports have been down since returning from their coronavirus-related hiatus, despite people being more likely to be stuck at home and having been deprived of sports on TV for months. Some fans have expressed a dislike of overt social justice demonstrations that have taken over in football and basketball.

The NFL featured social justice messages in the end zones, a playing of the black national anthem before the game, and players locking arms before the game as social justice messages were broadcast on the scoreboard. And even those efforts were further politicized by the Texans, who stayed in the locker room while the national anthems were played as a protest against "empty gestures."

There weren't many fans at the game due to social distancing for COVID-19, but some of the fans in attendance booed players during a moment of silence before the game, apparently displeased with the social justice presentation.

The NBA playoff ratings during the first round were alarmingly low, down 27% from 2019 and 40% from 2018. The NBA's social justice displays have been even more ubiquitous than the NFL's. "Black Lives Matter" is painted on the court in large letters for every game, and players display social justice messages on the back of their jerseys while coaches sport "Racial Justice" badges on their shirts.

A recent Harris Poll found that politics has been a top reason people are turning away from the NBA:

A new Harris Poll backs Trump's critique of the NBA, with 39% of sports fans saying they are watching fewer games. And the chief reason why? Politics. The longtime polling agency surveyed nearly 2,000 people over the weekend and gave people ten options to choose from on why they are watching less basketball.

"The league has become too political" was the clear choice for the decline, with 38% of respondents. "Boring without fans" captured 28% of the vote while the NBA's association with China caused 19% of sports fans to turn the dial, another nod to a league Trump labeled a "political organization" last week after players boycotted games in response to a police officer shooting Jacob Blake seven times in the back in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The poll found that Republicans were more likely to be turned off by the league's politics that Democrats.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell ducks question about national anthem, isn't concerned about social justice hurting ratings



NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell isn't worried that the league's heavy social justice emphasis for the upcoming season will hurt television ratings, despite evidence that some fans have been turned off by the NBA's demonstrations and protests, Goodell told CNBC.

The NFL has long dominated professional sports television ratings in the United States, but there was some belief in past years, particularly in 2017, that national anthem kneeling protests and the controversy surrounding them hurt the league's ratings. Now that the NFL is embracing, instead of opposing, overt social justice displays, Goodell isn't concerned.

"Our ratings have really been the envy of every entertainment and sports property," Goodell told CNBC. "We have the broadest audience, we have the best partners in all of television and media. We feel that ratings always go up and down for a variety of reasons."

When asked about the issue of national anthem protests, which upset many football fans who believe those demonstrations are disrespectful to the country, Goodell deflected.

"I wonder if you would agree that your own stance as it pertains to social justice has evolved since Kaepernick first took that knee. Certainly your recent interviews suggest that," CNBC host Carl Quintanilla said to Goodell. "I think some of our viewers want to know whether players will be on the field for the anthem, and whether you as a league and the ownership are willing to withstand any pushback if in fact we do see players take knees."

"I would tell you that all of us, hopefully, are evolving and learning—we should be—and we all should realize that we have to do more," Goodell responded. "I'm proud of what our league has done. I said it several months ago that we should've listened to our players earlier and been able to understand the things that were going on in our communities. We're seeing that play out on television sets across the country. They have been happening in our communities for years—decades—and we have to end it."

Goodell has fully embraced social justice activism by players in recent months, especially since the death of George Floyd in May. He said he was wrong for not listening to and understanding what players were protesting in previous years, and now the league is actively participating in social justice activism. From ESPN:

The NFL is planning extensive content around social injustice for Week 1 of the regular season, sources told ESPN.

Among options discussed by the league and players union, according to a source involved: Players reading personalized poems and delivering first-person vignettes based on experience with social injustice. These stories could be incorporated into game-day broadcasts.

This is in addition to recognizing victims of police brutality on the backs of helmets and playing or performing what's known as the Black national anthem, "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," before the season-opening games, as ESPN senior NFL writer Jason Reid reported in July.

(H/T The Daily Wire)