Why Nfl Viewership Decline

The three factors that are causing viewership to decline include the Olympic year, the presidential race, and over the top services. The Olympic year started on the 5th of August and ran to 21st of August while the Paralympics went from September 7th to the 18th. This leaches viewers from the MLB and NFL, which makes their ratings look lower. Moving to the presidential race, there have been four debates occurring on September 26th, October 4th, October 9th, and October 19th. This directly affects the MLB regular season and playoffs and NFL. Two dates, September 26th and October 9th, affected the NFL prime time slots. Finally looking at over the top services, many have started taking viewership away from cable affecting ratings. The problem
To start with the basics, “Sunday Night Football, television’s highest-rated prime-time show for five years running, has seen a 10 percent viewership drop so far this season. Cable’s top sports property, “Monday Night Football,” is down 19 percent — the series’ slowest start in a decade. Through two games, “Thursday Night Football” viewership is down 15 percent” (Ourand, Karp, & Kaplan, "Time to panic over declining viewership? ", 2016).
All three of the prime time games are down by at least 10 percent two weeks into the season. This one stat should be enough to make the NFL very concerned for the future.
Consumers are watching sports in a variety of ways in the current day in age. Led by live TV via cable, many are starting to migrate to over the top services, social media and illegal streaming. Why watch the game when you can see all of the stats and highlights on Twitter? Or why pay for an expensive cable bill, when a simple Google search can locate an illegal stream of games. Also, many bars are starting to carry NFL Sunday ticket which means dozens of fans can watch games for “free”. The day of age where consumers would watch live TV at home is starting to
He stated, “Last year we watched a lot of sport events on live TV, while this year we have Sunday Ticket and Center Ice, we watch a lot less live TV. Not only that, but with Sportscenter now on late night, I can miss the games during the night and watch the late night Sportscenter and be caught up. Those are the two major differences.” This is something I noticed that I do a lot of also, which would add to the viewership numbers of over the top services, a directly competitor of live TV. Also, as we get older and busier, it is easier to look up scores and highlights on social media like Instagram and Twitter. This allows access to all the important information and plays that happened within the games that