Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban believes the NFL's decline in popularity due to oversaturation he predicted three years ago "continues and is accelerating," according to Cindy Boren of the WASHINGTON POST. Cuban in '14 "created a stir when he predicted that an NFL 'implosion' was only 10 years away because 'pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. Cuban admitted in an email the NFL "still has great TV ratings relative to other shows." However, Boren noted the league is "everywhere: Thursday nights, Sunday mornings from London, Sunday afternoons, Sunday nights, Monday nights and ... Saturday nights" coming in December. Additionally, in-game highlights are "everywhere on social media, websites and mobile apps and the Red Zone channel allow fans to watch every touchdown and keep up with their fantasy teams, diluting the attention they pay to actual games." 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch earlier this week said he believes the "proliferation of Thursday availability -- and the proliferation of football generally -- does mean that you’re asking a lot from customers to watch Thursday." The NFL's biggest drop of any demo, the 11% across-the-board ratings drop in the 18- to 34-year-old demographic, is "particularly concerning for TV execs and for Cuban." Cuban noted NFL's future problems are is confirmed by the "dramatic decline in participation by kids in tackle football and from a TV perspective the significant drop in viewing by millennials and younger." He wrote, "Kids playing Minecraft or watching YouTube videos instead of watching sports on TV and the lack of families having a hardcore allegiance to their city’s teams is a fundamental problem for all major sports. But it’s a bigger problem for the NFL because a growing number of parents are trying to hide football from their kids so they don’t want to play" (WASHINGTON POST, 10/27).
