The NFL is still the dominant sport in America, but it could be better.
Halfway through the season, if you look at this year’s NFL Ratings, you’ll see that they’ve dropped from last season. Blame it on the Amazon Prime video game of Thursday Night Football.
Overall, NFL viewership has fallen from an average of 16.5 million to 15.7 million.
The NFL’s mainstays, Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football, are largely unchanged from last season, with no major changes.
The majority of rating downgrades occur on Thursdays.
Amazon’s exclusive TNF broadcast averages 10.3 million viewers, down 16% from last year. Thursday’s 2021 game was available to watch on NFL Network and was partially simulcast on FOX.
Streaming is not going anywhere
The NFL is still going strong, and there’s no reason to raise alarm bells just yet, but if this pattern continues for the rest of the season and into next, some executives will no doubt start to feel the heat.
Amazon paid about $1 billion per season for the rights to air TNF on its streaming service for the next 11 years.
We’ve argued many times here at OutKick that there are too many damn streaming services out there. Of the “extra” streaming services, Amazon will probably turn things around. Because Amazon has become an integral part of American life.
However, other streaming services such as Pecock and Apple TV+ may take longer to become available to consumers.
NFL ratings mostly drop Thursday night
Even Thursday Night Football had an absolutely terrible game.
Fans across the country are joking about how low the TNF Games will score. Some teams argue that short turnarounds not only exhaust them, they are just bad chemistry. Whatever the cause, the game is extremely painful to watch.
When Thursday Night Football first debuted, football fans loved the game. Who doesn’t want to play as much soccer as possible?
