The late Titans-Broncos game on ESPN averaged 7.7 million viewers, a 30% drop from a year agoGETTY IMAGES
The audience for ESPN's "MNF" was down for both games, continuing a Week 1 in which the NFL's viewership "declined on most networks from a year earlier," according to Joe Flint of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. The first game, Steelers-Giants, "averaged 10.8 million viewers, down 20% from the first game a year ago," while the late Titans-Broncos game "fared worse, averaging 7.7 million viewers, a 30% drop." The early declines are "due in part to the larger-than-usual competition from other sports and a heavy news cycle." Industry consultant and former Fox Sports exec Patrick Crakes explained, "The NFL cold starts the 2020 season amidst the most competitive environment it's ever faced from multiple sports leagues alongside a news cycle driven by a historic presidential election, a deadly global pandemic and horrific wildfires to post the highest viewing on all TV since the Super Bowl across pretty much all its broadcast windows." Crakes: "Not bad I'd say." Flint writes there "might also have been some backlash to the league and players’ embrace of the social-justice and Black Lives Matter movements." Meanwhile, consumption of football via streaming was "up from a year ago." For example, Fox' online viewing was "up dramatically." The network said that its Sunday coverage had an "average-minute online audience of nearly 600,000 people, an 84% increase from last season" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 9/16).
POLITICAL BATTLEFIELD: YAHOO SPORTS' Jay Busbee wrote for longtime fans, the league's "first attempt at a more progressive stance in support of social justice" caused "something of a shock to see protest incorporated as part of every pregame." The NFL has a "social justice blowback issue to deal with that’s not going away." It "can't take its usual everything-to-everyone approach anymore." If the league leans into social justice, it "turns off a very loud segment of its stick-to-sports fanbase." The NFL will lean "toward the money, of course." The question is "whether that money lies in old ways or new territories." The NFL now is a "political battlefield, and the games are only a small part of the conflict" (SPORTS.YAHOO.com, 9/15). But Octagon Senior VP Dan Cohen said, "If you were to look at a basket of rationales or reasons why the ratings are down, I think the social justice movement piece of it is not even within the top five." THE ATHLETIC's Daniel Kaplan wrote, "Ratings gyrations of the kind seen in Week 1 should not be terribly concerning" (THEATHLETIC.com, 9/15).
LOCAL LOOKOUT: In Atlanta, Tim Tucker reports TV ratings in the market for the Falcons' season opener Sunday against the Seahawks were "down slightly from the team’s first game last year." Fox' telecast "averaged a 16.2 rating here, compared with a 17.4 rating in Atlanta for the Falcons' 2019 opener, a road game at Minnesota" (ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, 9/16). In San Diego, Tom Krasovic reports the Chargers' season opener played Sunday "drew the second smallest television rating in San Diego for one of the team’s games since it moved" to L.A. The "only lower rating was for a late-season Saturday night cable-only telecast" in '17. CBS' broadcast of the team's win against the Bengals did a "9.0 local rating," marking a "steep falloff from Chargers season averages of 14.2, 15.2 and 15.0 the past three years" (SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE, 9/16).
