Week 2 of the NFL season is picking up right where Week 1 ended in terms of TV ratings. This weekend’s Sunday Night Football failed to reverse the downward trend and the same holds true for last night’s Monday Night Football on ESPN.
Monday night’s messy game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Chicago Bears scored just an 8.3 in the Nielsen metered market rating, according to TV By The Numbers.
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The lukewarm numbers mark an 11% dip from last year’s Week 2 game between the New York Jets and the Indianapolis Colts.
In fact, these ratings are the lowest ever for a Week 2 MNF game and cement a fourth consecutive year of decline for the NFL, according to Rich Greenfield.
#fumble — @ESPN’s #MNF ratings lowest-ever for Week 2 — 4th straight year of decline pic.twitter.com/c3GZSO6rjn
— Rich Greenfield (@RichBTIG) September 20, 2016
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The NFL has now aired seven prime time regular season games this year with several of the matchups posting the lowest ratings in seven years. An uptick in Week 3 is unexpected given that the Houston Texans will face a New England Patriots team still without Tom Brady while Brian Hoyer fills in for Jay Cutler in the Chicago Bears’ contest against the Tony Romo-less Dallas Cowboys. Next Monday night’s Atlanta Falcons-New Orleans Saints game will also be competing against the first presidential debate, with ad buyers predicting just 10-11 million viewers (20% dip compared to 2015).
One of the main culprits for the NFL’s ratings struggles appears to be the ongoing National Anthem protest spearheaded by San Francisco 49ers backup quarterback Colin Kaepernick. The protests have sparked several online fan campaigns, including the popular #BoycottNFL, aimed at sending a message to the league.
Another issue could be directly of the NFL’s own doing. Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Brady four games for his role in DeflateGate, but the league scheduled two primetime Patriots games during the first four weeks of the season. The three-time MVP is one of the NFL’s biggest draws, so it’s no surprise that casual fans have been tuning out with Brady suspended.
It’s also worth noting that last night’s game faced some decent competition on TV. Monday night marked the series premiere of CBS’ new comedy Kevin Can Wait (11.15 million viewers), NBC’s new sitcom The Good Place (8.06 million) and the season premiere of the ever-popular The Big Bang Theory (15.44 million).
Still, we’ve reached a point where the NFL needs to be legitimately worried about their diminishing returns.
This article has been updated to incorporate the latest data from Nielsen.
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