NFL screws in stadium fans

[JAFF]

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...-stadium-fans/

[Ironshaft]

In the comments below, someone stated that the NFL viewship base was 5% in-stadium and 95% on screen.

I found this from a Forbes article in Jan 2023 located here:

Sports in general and the NFL in particular dominated television viewing in 2022. According to recently released data from Nielsen, sports accounted for 94 of the 100 most watched telecasts last year. The NFL alone accounted for a record 82 of the 100 telecasts, up from 75 in 2021. The remaining top- rated sporting events for the year were five college football games, three World Cup matches, two college basketball games, one Winter Olympics (airing after the Super Bowl) and the Kentucky Derby.

Four of the remaining six telecasts were live news events that aired on multiple channels; the State of the Union address, mid-term election results, the first telecast of the January 6 committee hearing and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky address at U.S. Capitol. Rounding out the top 100 were the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Oscars. There were no World Series games or NBA Finals games that cracked the top 100.

That last line is telling. The NFL is still the big dog sports broadcast with 82 of the top 100 with MLB and NBA not even making any of the top 100 slots.

Sports has been rightfully called the last sustainable remnant of linear television’s once dominance. According to Sportico, the most watched scripted entertainment telecast of the year was the premiere Yellowstone’s fifth season which aired across several Paramount Global networks. The program averaged only 12.5 million viewers. The highest rated entertainment program for all of 2022 was the FBI on CBS which averaged a paltry 7.2 million viewers.

There are the setup stats....

Average Audience Regular Season

NFL Games (in millions)

2022 16.7

So, on any given weekend, 16.7m folks are watching NFL football.

If you google NFL in-stadium attendance, the NFL.com page gives the average in-stadium attendance for 2022 as 69,389.

69,389 x 16 games per weekend = 1,110,022 folks per week.

1,110,022 \ 16,700,000 = 6.6% of NFL viewership is in person versus on screens.

So, the NFL making a decision to cater to 94% of their customer base vs 6% of their customer base makes business sense.

Now, you can argue all day long that fans who shell out the expense of in-stadium tickets and all the other expenses that come with it are more important fans....but when outnumbered approx 1:20 ?!? Yeah, we can see why the NFL made the decision.