NFL's Declining Viewership: One Slice at a Time
- Thread starter tims4wins
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Yes, as indicated in my post, it's not one single factor. But if you don't think that the changing media environment is a factor at play in the background, I don't know what to tell you. Again - you can only defy gravity for so long.
Au contrarire, one of the big 2 in DFS just announced revenue that was up 4x over last year at this time. Not sure we need to be holding any bake sales for them just yet.
Re: soccer
The Premier League is up too.
http://corporate.comcast.com/news-information/news-feed/premier-league-pushing-huge-viewership-gains-for-nbc-sports-group
However, people in this thread have been saying that NFL ratings are down because of cordcutters and a nice summer and young people watching more online.
That is unlikely to be true when soccer viewership, on TV, right now, is way up.
It's early days in judging media trends, but if I were investing in a sports property right now, like John Henry I'd be looking to soccer, not an NFL team.
The Premier League is up too.
http://corporate.comcast.com/news-information/news-feed/premier-league-pushing-huge-viewership-gains-for-nbc-sports-group
Granted that's a press release.
However, people in this thread have been saying that NFL ratings are down because of cordcutters and a nice summer and young people watching more online.
That is unlikely to be true when soccer viewership, on TV, right now, is way up.
It's early days in judging media trends, but if I were investing in a sports property right now, like John Henry I'd be looking to soccer, not an NFL team.
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The major issue with DFS is all the advertisements brought about regulatory scrutiny about whether or not it's gambling. Some states have played better with them than others, with Massachusetts not surprisingly being one of them while NY and Nevada are on the other end of the spectrum, but DFS is also trying to shelter themselves more from the public eye and de-emphasize the money portion.
Yes. And this is another example where a rising tide within a given sport/league can help buck the background trends. NHL ratings have been on the rise as well, albeit not to the same extent. Soccer and other ascendant sports are still small enough that they can grow ratings by growing the fan base at a faster rate than the drip drip of fragmentation in the background that is slowly decreasing linear audiences across the board.
NFL has run out of room for that in the US, which is why you see them ramping up their global expansion efforts. The easy money domestically has been tapped.
Well, this is the core of the question, isn't it? We want to know whether there are external pressures pushing down NFL viewership, like head injuries, grabbing public money for private stadiums, oversaturation of ads, or penalties that happen every other down. And to see if those factors are pushing down viewership, you need to see whether the NFL is declining faster than you'd expect considering that linear audiences across the board are decreasing.
I agree -- soccer's relatively small size helps them find new viewers. However, I'd guess that more is going on. Every year, the NFL needs to acquire younger fans as older fans get married and have kids or get otherwise busy in their lives. (We've seen some testimonials to that effect in this thread.) To me it seems like those younger fans are picking up soccer now, not just football.
So I think it's not just that soccer starts from a less-saturated place -- I think many kids that 20 years ago would become NFL fans are today becoming fans of other sports. That's bad for the NFL. I don't think we'll see it hit ratings hard for a while, until it's too late for the NFL to reverse.
If one wanted to use data to determine if young fans are jumping ship, I'd think one could look at viewership by age. You'd want to see how viewership of the Premier League and the NFL is growing amongst younger age brackets. Looking at fantasy football participation broken down by age, and comparing to historical data, would also be informative.
Soccer's fan base skews young and Hispanic; of course it is growing. But it's too small to have any relevance to a discussion ostensibly about the sudden drop in NFL ratings early this season.
Yes, breaking those data down by ethnicity and economic background would probably also be necessary.
Also, not a lot of Freakonomics readers/viewers around here, or economists.
Also, not a lot of Freakonomics readers/viewers around here, or economists.
I am very confused about DFS. On the one hand there is some smart money investing in them, but on the other, from reports I have heard, they are bleeding red ink and not filling tournaments (which results in marginal cost losses, not just inability to cover fixed costs). Maybe I am missing something, but DFS has a "Bitcoin" feel to it for me.
Soccer's TV fan base in the US definitely skews young (and high income), but I'm not sure where you got Hispanic from.
Watching Sunday Night Football 6 months after it happens is a very different thing than watching a Big Bang Theory episode 6 months after it airs, so trends in live tv aren't necessarily going to affect the two things the same. Watching the game on Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime, or OnDemand just isn't a viable option.
In addition, most of the games are still on broadcast (especially if its a local game), so there's no real issue for cord cutters.
If the changing media is a factor, its a small one - which is shown quite clearly by the year after year gains in NFL viewership while everything else has been declining. The diversification of media hasn't made any astronomical gains since January.
I was talking about the overall fan base for the sport, not the TV audience -- that would be question-begging (I think). I don't know if people of Hispanic descent watch more MLS on TV than your average American, but I'm pretty sure they're bigger fans of soccer in general.
Don't get too hung up on the not filling tournaments stuff. Its cheap marketing in most cases.
There's a business there but not sure there should be two big players and not sure the the valuations last year made sense
The federal law against online gambling explicitly exempts fantasy sports. Unless there's an applicable state law, that's not a question.
31 US 5361 1 E ix "does not include":
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5362
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Why not? Liga MX and Spanish language broadcasts of MLS or World Cup games do huge numbers in the US relative to the Hispanic share of population.
Yes, I'm aware that time shifted viewing doesn't quite have the same appeal in sports. But that's not the only shift in the media consumption landscape.
Most still are, but an increasing proportion aren't. Monday nights and half of Thursday nights require a package of some sort.
Secular ratings declines for major sports is actually a pretty recent phenomenon, and remains rather spotty. The notion that "everything else has been declining" in sports isn't supported by any data I've seen. MLB on national TV is of course in long-term decline but that's offset by continued strong local ratings. Hockey has ebbed and is now bouncing back a bit. MLS or at least soccer as a sport has seen significant viewership growth.
I think attempts to pin this on any single factor are ill-advised, but there's no reason the NFL should be immune from the broader media fragmentation trends - it's illogical to assume that their linear ratings were sustainable in a world where younger fans aren't watching linear TV. Perhaps with the accumulation of shit (concussions, DFG, domestic violence) it's just a tonnage issue and people have more content consumption choices than ever now that they've been turned off. Whatever the case, it's not like there was a black swan event in the off-season to prompt this decline that would serve as a viable alternative theory. The country doesn't give a shit about Tom Brady - they root for the laundry.
And the question is whether DFS is considered fantasy sports or gambling. DFS falls on the fantasy sports side whereas other groups, such as the casino lobbying groups in Nevada, fall on the gambling side.
Here are this year's soccer TV numbers . This is just one week, but other weeks show it's been pretty stable this season.
tl;dr
Liga MX has highest avg, 650k, with 6 matches weekly
EPL is second, 430k, with 5 matches weekly
MLS is third, 290k, with 5 matches weekly. But gets bigger avg numbers, 830k, on the weekly Univision match. There have been two matches this season over 1m on Fox.
Champions league gets 400k but is only two days a month right now and gets bigger as the season progresses
I don't think soccer has taken much if anything form NFL. Whatever has tempered ratings for everything else that has high levels of market saturation, like HBO, Cable news, etc, I think will catch up to the NFL. Are NFL viewers getting older?
tl;dr
Liga MX has highest avg, 650k, with 6 matches weekly
EPL is second, 430k, with 5 matches weekly
MLS is third, 290k, with 5 matches weekly. But gets bigger avg numbers, 830k, on the weekly Univision match. There have been two matches this season over 1m on Fox.
Champions league gets 400k but is only two days a month right now and gets bigger as the season progresses
I don't think soccer has taken much if anything form NFL. Whatever has tempered ratings for everything else that has high levels of market saturation, like HBO, Cable news, etc, I think will catch up to the NFL. Are NFL viewers getting older?
If you're a fan of ESPNs outside the lines, they had what I thought was a great piece of DFS a few weeks ago.
http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/17374929/otl-investigates-implosion-daily-fantasy-sports-leaders-draftkings-fanduel
Except DFS isn't close to being dead and the thing reads like a eulogy. Interesting article but wholly faulty premise IMO.
I stopped listening to the Freakonomics podcast when host Stephen Dubner linked A-Rod with DFG and said sports fans love cheaters who cheat to win. As to readers/viewers, I think with the salary cap, the economics of team construction is another variable and makes the NFL more interesting than other sports. In my option, BB has an advantage over other GM’s in that he applies his Economics degree to football.
EconTalk is a much better podcast than Freakonomics. Their comments section is like comparing SOSH to gangrene forums. There have been many sports related topics discussed here is a link. Russ Roberts the host grew up in Lexington and is a Red Sox, Celtics and Patriots fan.
Edit: added link to EconTalk.
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Well, since you bring it up--
I mentioned Freakonomics because Levitt (the economist founder, along with journalist Dubner) is famous for digging up unconventional control groups to make rigorous statements about many topics. The Dubner approach is based on instrumental variables (pioneered in part by Josh Angrist, also a sometimes sports economist and Red Sox fan). Levitt has tried to find instruments to address questions about things in common life like prostitution and bagel shops that are outside the domain of traditional economics.
Now, Levitt has faced criticism. Some of his findings have not held up (often for non-instrumental reasons like data quality). He's been accused of ruining economics for focusing on "trivial" topics. Probably the most telling referendum on him within the field is the career path of his favored academic protegee, Emily Oster of economists-are-smarter-than-doctors, wine-is-ok-during-pregnancy fame. Levitt brought her to UChicago as a hotshot young star after she published a few freakonomics-style papers, and she was denied tenure by Levitt's own department there. The Freakonomics media empire including the podcast is, I agree, pretty weak. I've listened a few times and they don't have enough material to do all the shows they do.
So I probably should have said something like "there's not a lot of microeconomists or fans of Angrist and Krueger here". You're right that Freakonomics is not great.
As for EconTalk, yes, I listen to it too. But keep in mind it has a bias. It's part of the Hoover Institute which has been associated with the GOP for decades and has had a revolving-door relationship with the Reagan and Bush administrations. Hoover is funded mainly by the very wealthy through sources like the Walton Foundation and Scaife. And EconTalk is hosted by the Library of Economics and Liberty, funded by the Liberty Fund. As with most any policy organization today with "Freedom" or "Liberty" in their name, that means they lean heavily right and are funded by a billionaire. In the case of the Liberty Fund, the founder was Pierre Goodrich and they still push conservative views today. So Russ Roberts is OK but keep in mind he has a particular policy bent; some of his interviews with climate change skeptics are in particular pretty egregious. Roberts would be the first to claim that all views have a bias and one should simply admit this at all times. It's hard to dislike Roberts however, when he also sees the parallels between news and the media and the Patriots and DFG.
As for football and soccer and ratings and predictions, let's see what happens to ratings over the rest of this year. And next.
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I'm an economist and Krueger taught me in grad school. I still think the use of MLS ratings as an instrumental variable to understand what's going on with NFL ratings is problematic.
So you're saying you stopped listening to a great podcast because an author said something you didn't agree with about sports?
Freakonomics is now a franchise. I read the first book, Freakonomics. Great read, innovative, controversial topics like crime rate drop because of legalized abortion. naming a child and more. Highly recommend. I read the next book, SuperFreakonomics, Easy read, more of the same, still good. Watched the Freakonomics movie either on Netflix or Amazon Prime. I thought it was okay. Listened to many Freakonomics podcast on iTunes, loved some episodes, like Sciontology. I read the next book in the series When to Rob A Bank. In this book they admit it is outtakes from the Freakonomics blog including the take on cheating.
In all, each new release of a Freakonomics product has diminishing returns to me. Like Star Trek, Stargate and CSI franchises. Lumping A-Rod with Tom Brady made me evaluate the opportunity costs of listening to their podcast. I don’t want to discourage anyone from listening to their podcast. It is a lot better than most. I’d rather listen to EconTalk.
In all, each new release of a Freakonomics product has diminishing returns to me. Like Star Trek, Stargate and CSI franchises. Lumping A-Rod with Tom Brady made me evaluate the opportunity costs of listening to their podcast. I don’t want to discourage anyone from listening to their podcast. It is a lot better than most. I’d rather listen to EconTalk.
That statement doesn't necessarily support the claim that Soccer's US fan base skews Latino. Maybe you mean to say they do huge numbers relative to overall soccer broadcasts? I'm not questioning whether US Latinos prefer soccer at a greater percentage than US non-Latinos; the question is whether a greater percentage of soccer fans/viewers in this country are Latinos.
I see the Mexican league ratings are somewhat higher (on average)than European soccer, but that doesn't really tell the full story of "fan base" because of both the time zone issues and the lack of data concerning ethnic demographics of the viewers of apples-to-apples telecasts. (While I'm willing to concede the great majority of those watching the Mexican league are Latino (and the great majority of those Mexican or Mexican-American), I'm not sure that tells you much about the overall fan base for soccer.)
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I agree with all you say on Levitt and Dubner. I also am aware of Russ Roberts bias and he admits them. I disagree with him on some issues also. What I like about the podcast is he lets his guest get their point of view across. If you read the comments section a few days after the podcast he and his guests get challenged. He responds and sometimes his guest will respond.
I send in email suggestions for future guests. I have suggested Ernie Adams and Thomas Dimitroff. That will never happen. During the DFG Legal mega thread which I read entirely, I was amazed at how many SOSH posters were lawyers and learned much reading them.
This is the type of thread that I like to contribute as well as the current one on the possible Raiders move to Vegas. There will be others when there is free agent signings, salary cap issues and labor negotiations. The other threads I just read and learn.
I used to listen to it regularly and find that they have moved away from empirical econmics and towards being a talk show. As such, I don't think it is differentiated or particularly insightful. To each their own, I guess...but what would be hard to argue is that the topics of late are actually driven by the thinking, research, and analysis that founded the franchise. Below are the last handful of episodes aired; I think only the Uber one might be faithful to the initial book's standards (the waiting in line item could---but didn't):
257 Why Uber Is an Economist’s Dream
To you, it’s just a ride-sharing app that gets you where you’re going. But to an economist, Uber is a massive repository of moment-by-moment data that is helping answer some of the field’s most elusive questions. 9/8/16 39.47
256 The Future (Probably) Isn’t as Scary as You Think
Internet pioneer Kevin Kelly tries to predict the future by identifying what’s truly inevitable. How worried should we be? Yes, robots will probably take your job — but the future will still be pretty great. 9/1/16 34.58
REBROADCAST: Are You Ready for a Glorious Sunset?
The gist: we spend billions on end-of-life healthcare that doesn’t do much good. So what if a patient could forego the standard treatment and get a cash rebate instead? 8/25/16 37.46
REBROADCAST: Aziz Ansari Needs Another Toothbrush
The comedian, actor — and now, author — answers our FREAK-quently Asked Questions. 8/18/16 31.25
255 What Are You Waiting For?
Standing in line represents a particularly sloppy — and frustrating — way for supply and demand to meet. Why haven’t we found a better way to get what we want? Is it possible that we secretly enjoy waiting in line? And might it even be (gulp) good for us? 8/11/16 35.53
REBROADCAST: Is It Okay for Restaurants to Racially Profile Their Employees?
We seem to have decided that ethnic food tastes better when it’s served by people of that ethnicity (or at least something close). Does this make sense — and is it legal? 8/4/16 51.55
254 Ten Ideas to Make Politics Less Rotten
We Americans may love our democracy — at least in theory — but at the moment our feelings toward the Federal government lie somewhere between disdain and hatred. Which electoral and political ideas should be killed off to make way for a saner system?
Oh - the answer to that, from all (public, private, syndicated) surveys I've seen, is unequivocally yes. Along with MMA, soccer is the sport that enjoys that highest share of Latino fans.
I wonder if BbtL's has had a similar decline and, if so, why? Just impressionistically, this part of SoSH seems less busy than in previous years. If so, that's odd because, frankly, it's been an amazingly dramatic season with ....well, you know all the reasons why.
Again, I say, 'if so.' Perhaps it's not the case? Not saying my impression is quantitatively based. But if my impression is true, explaining it might combine a lot of the elements discussed in this thread. To name a few:
-The DFG bs is an engaging telenovela and god knows I followed and can still lay out the reasons why it's total crap, and yet it's been months since I've opened up that thread or read pieces about the case. That sort of reality show drama tires.
-The concussion stuff has not driven me away from football, but it has driven away close friends including 2 with whom I used to either watch games with or text with. And, even if I'm still an addict, I am slightly guilty about it -- sort of like eating veal -- and it has reduced my obsession.
-Just getting older -- as others have said, obsession with sports is a young person's thing. I lost my obsession with the Sox a few years back and while I've watched all 3 Pats games this year I've watched far fewer other NFL games.
Its not surprising, as a result, that I have less interest in threads on this page.
Again, the assumption in this post that BbtL is less busy may be patently false. IN which case....never mind.
Again, I say, 'if so.' Perhaps it's not the case? Not saying my impression is quantitatively based. But if my impression is true, explaining it might combine a lot of the elements discussed in this thread. To name a few:
-The DFG bs is an engaging telenovela and god knows I followed and can still lay out the reasons why it's total crap, and yet it's been months since I've opened up that thread or read pieces about the case. That sort of reality show drama tires.
-The concussion stuff has not driven me away from football, but it has driven away close friends including 2 with whom I used to either watch games with or text with. And, even if I'm still an addict, I am slightly guilty about it -- sort of like eating veal -- and it has reduced my obsession.
-Just getting older -- as others have said, obsession with sports is a young person's thing. I lost my obsession with the Sox a few years back and while I've watched all 3 Pats games this year I've watched far fewer other NFL games.
Its not surprising, as a result, that I have less interest in threads on this page.
Again, the assumption in this post that BbtL is less busy may be patently false. IN which case....never mind.
You are missing the biggest factor in this forum's declining viewership, which is Inside the Pylon.
This is inaccurate. A ITP reader is likely to be the biggest fan and user of this forum. It's like the election. The die hards will be here, in all forms, but it's the ones in the middle who are departing the NFL and this forum.
I seriously can't tell whether DFS is declining, growing, or staying about the same. Anecdotally the people I know who used to play have pretty much stopped playing and gone back to gambling, but that is a somewhat small sample size in a geographically concentrated area.
It seems like the numbers are all over the place, is there a reliable source for data on the industry?
But that is not the question.
Yes, the identification is quite poor.
As a fan of Tom Brady, I too hope that the decline in NFL ratings is due to Goodell's actions. But to move beyond speculation about Goodell, one must try to use data to understand what caused the ratings change. We talked about a strategy to do this: look at soccer and other sport ratings broken down by age group and race. Find ratings groups that don't know much about Goodell, or Brady. Look at parents who know and care about concussions (perhaps by education or county) and those who do not, controlling for age, and see if their viewing habits are changing.
There are business analysts in the NFL front office doing this right now. In the absence of that level of analysis, we will take any proxies we can get, weighting them appropriately.
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I doubt it since both companies are still private and any other industry source probably has an inherent goal to either goose up the numbers or say it's dying. If I had to guess, the revenue figures are down but profitability, or more likely loss figures, are improved from prior years due to less ad spend, though possibly offset by legal/regulatory related fees.
It's still very much in its infancy and I personally believe this is a "winner take all" industry that will require the merger/buyout of one of the two major firms, but I have a hard time seeing it falling completely. It's essentially a more niche version of fantasy sports, so I see DFS growth to somewhat mirror trends in that industry, especially as it matures.
As mainly a reader/lurker of SoSH, there has been a pretty substantial difference in this forum since ITP. It's great and all, but this board has very much suffered because of it.