My guess is that President-elect Donald Trump is not finished taking a bite out of NFL TV ratings this year.
I have long viewed this crazy election cycle as the main reason why every NFL package is down this season. After all, news network ratings are up significantly. Through Week 9, Sunday afternoon cable news viewing increased by 99 percent over last year, according to Fox Sports’ Mike Mulvihill.
Those viewers have to come from somewhere.
My belief was that NFL ratings would return to normal (or at least close to it) last weekend, the first after the election. I had circled the Thanksgiving Day games as the first real test to see whether the election really affected the NFL as much as I thought.
But that prediction was based on a win by Hillary Clinton, who was leading most of the polls in the run-up to Nov. 8. Now that Trump has prevailed, my opinion has changed. Now, I expect he will continue to suck all the oxygen out of live television. News networks will see ratings gains every time Trump makes a move to build his administration.
Again, those viewers will have to come from somewhere.
Mulvihill pegged total NFL consumption through Week 9 as being down 14 percent. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the NFL perform better in the second half of the season. But I don’t expect the league to revert back to normal until the fall of 2017.
— John Ourand
