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Monday Night Football overall ratings down 19 percent

Posted by Olog-hai on Wed Oct 5 01:19:19 2016, in response to Bye Bye Kaepernick, posted by R2Chinatown on Tue Sep 20 18:01:15 2016.

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NFL's 'Monday Night Football' Keeps Dropping In Ratings

Brandon Katz, contributor
Oct 4, 2016 @ 02:01 PM

There’s no denying that the numerous #BoycottNFL online campaigns and fan outrage aimed at the National Anthem protests in the NFL have taken a toll in terms of viewership.

Additionally, cord-cutting continues to eat into traditional TV’s ratings at an alarming rate.

But could there be something else at play?

We’re barely a year removed from the NFL setting all-time records in viewership, yet now the league is on pace for its lowest ratings in years. That’s a sharp and unexpectedly sudden turn.

Given the politicized controversies and the variety of streaming options this year, have we reached a cumulative point of football fatigue? The numbers suggest so.

Last night’s Monday Night Football matchup between the Minnesota Vikings and New York Giants drew a 9.1 overnight rating, an 8% drop from last year’s comparable Week 4 game between the Detroit Lions and Seattle Seahawks. The New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs game in 2014 earned a 9.6 rating.

While the number of streaming viewers has increased — last night’s game attracted 262,000 average minute viewers on digital platforms, a 23% increase from last year — total viewership is still trending downward. Last week’s Monday Night Football game unsurprisingly got clobbered in the ratings thanks to the presidential debate. That game drew a 5.7 overnight rating, the lowest in MNF history.

Overall, MNF’s ratings are down a whopping 19% this year, according to Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch.

Now that the numbers have come in for last night’s game, we can safely label the NFL’s ratings problems as a larger trend. The question now becomes how does the NFL fix the problem?

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