COLUMN: Super Bowl teams are indication of bright NFL future
This Sunday, Atlanta will host the NFL’s Super Bowl LIII. The two participating teams, the Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots, hail from top media markets in the country and are both valued at more than $3 billion each. Viewership for the game is expected to be anywhere from 100 million to 115 million. And with two newly relocated teams in Los Angeles and the Oakland Raiders moving to Las Vegas within the next couple of years, the future looks bright for the NFL.
However, as recently as three seasons ago, the future for the NFL did not seem as bright. Numerous reports of domestic violence allegations against players, fears about CTE and other player safety concerns, and a national anthem controversy that seemed to divide the country into two separate factions (one that included the backing of the President) loomed over the league. To top it all off, the NFL experienced consecutive years of declining ratings, with its broadcast audience falling eight percent in 2016 and ten percent in 2017.
There were some who were ready to cast the NFL aside. Sports analysts scrambled to explain the drop in viewers. Entrepreneur, businessman and owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban scoffed at the idea of purchasing an NFL team in 2017, saying, “Why would I buy an NFL team if I think the league is in decline?”
After the 2018/2019 season, however, things seem to be turning back in the NFL’s favor. Viewership rose five percent this season, and after multiple predictions that the NBA would surpass the NFL in viewership, the NFL remains far and above NBA and the rest of the professional sports leagues. This has resulted in analysts speculating as to what caused this. Did the NFL schedule better teams for its Monday and Thursday night games? Did viewers forget about their reservations about CTE? Were they happy that a new NFL rule that barred players from kneeling during the anthem? While there are multiple factors that play into the NFL’s overall viewership, there are two reasons that I believe are the most likely.
The first reason is that scoring was way up this season. There were 1,371 touchdowns this year, an NFL record. Quarterbacks regularly threw for more than 200 yards in a single game, and the Rams-Chiefs game ended in both teams scoring more than 50 points, resulting in a game many dubbed as the greatest regular-season game ever. It is not a surprise that a rise in scoring has resulted in a rise in viewership. Scoring is inherently exciting.
The second is that the league has done a good job at preventing injuries of their most important players: the quarterbacks. It is likely not a coincidence that the viewership struggles of the 2017-18 season coincided with an alarming number of star quarterbacks sidelined with injuries, including Aaron Rodgers, Andrew Luck, Deshaun Watson, Carson Palmer, and Carson Wentz, to name a few. In response, the league instituted a rule that worked to prevent defensive players from causing too much harm to quarterbacks. While this rule has been criticized by some to constrict the ability of defensive players to adequately defend against the quarterback, it has resulted in fewer season-ending injuries for quarterbacks.
A combination of fewer star quarterbacks being sidelined with injuries and these same star quarterbacks producing a record number of touchdowns are the 2 reasons that viewership is up in the NFL. As long as this combination can continue to coexist, viewership will likely return and even surpass its previous highs, and the future for the NFL will indeed be bright.