When it comes to sports viewing, the NFL continues to be in a league of its own when it comes to the US audience. Indeed, even when compared against non-sporting viewing, the NFL can’t be beaten, such is the pull of the American Football league across the country.
After the first six weeks of the season, the NFL was averaging 16.6 million viewers, that’s an increase of 11% from last season, which is probably due to the fact that games are now more exciting for watching viewers as the stadiums are now full of fans.
Similarly, sports betting in the NFL is also up, again showing how interest in the market is broad. If you want to stay ahead of the game, you can make the most of this sports betting odds comparison service, which helps you increase your likely payouts.
Interestingly, two of the four most-watched NFL games of the first half of the season both involved veteran legend Tom Brady. 26.7 million watched as he returned to face his former team, the New England Patriots, and 23.2 million watched as his Tampa Bay team lost to the Dallas Cowboys in overtime. Such is the star power of the seven-time Super Bowl winner.
Those high numbers have continued throughout the regular season; in week 15, 22 million watched the Green Bay Packers vs. the Baltimore Ravens, and the additional week of fixtures will have done just as the league’s money men would have wanted, drawing in even more revenue.
Some had predicted that the NFL market would continue to drop, as it did in the first year of the coronavirus, but that hasn’t proven the case and as Patrick Crakes, former Fox Sports executive who is now a media consultant, puts it;
“It’s defied every trend inside the media for a decade. Why wouldn’t it continue to?”
And perhaps this is part and parcel of the enduring nature of the NFL, both in the US and overseas, where the market has grown year over year for some time now.
The lack of fans in stadiums was clearly a factor last year, but it’s not the case this time around, and that is hugely important, as Jay Rosenstein, one time VP of CBS Sports programing, sees it;
“As television executives, we always talk about where’s the best scene? What venue provides the most enthusiasm and excitement and passion and all of that,”
“And that’s what you get from stands being full again.”
“It gives directors a place to go to capture the emotion of the game,” he said. “And obviously the sound. The volume brings it across to the people at home that this is something breathtaking.”
This is a key point. The absence of a genuine atmosphere translates poorly to screen, and now with the NFL vibrant and alive once again, you can expect the numbers of viewers eagerly glued to their screens and devices to continue to improve, and this is sure to lead to a real spike in viewing figures for the postseason action.
