Throughout the NFL season, there is a level of criticism and vitriol directed towards game officials, usually centering around a controversial call that affects the outcome. With the legalization of sports betting in more than 37 states after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PAPSA) unconstitutional in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association (2018), some of the outcomes have fiscal ramifications for the fans. Jay Binkley, who was filling in on Fescoe in the Morning on Wednesday on 610 Sports Kansas City, spoke about how certain calls from officials during the games tend to annoy him.
With the NFL teams bringing in $18.6 billion in revenue and in the early stages of new national television rights contracts, the league could experience further windfall as time goes on. Yet the league does not consider its officials to be full-time employees, a designation that Binkley believes could cause fans to perceive certain calls being missed. Innovations in technology, however, have the potential to provide new capabilities that could improve on the enforcement of league rules.
“Do you want high-quality officials or do you want the assistant principal and basketball coach calling a game where millions of dollars are at stake; where the largest television audience ever is watching a game, like the Super Bowl last year,” Binkley said. “Again, they only take the best of the best, but these guys still have part-time jobs.”
Last year’s Super Bowl matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles drew an average of 115.1 million viewers on FOX, FOX Deportes and other digital platforms. The data, according to data from Nielsen Media Research, made the contest the most-watched television program in American history.
The league has also capitalized on the holidays, attaining large audiences on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Earlier in the week, CBS and Nickelodeon combined to average 29.2 million viewers in the Chiefs game against the Las Vegas Raiders, rendering the matchup the most-watched NFL Christmas Day game since 1989. The average audience across FOX, CBS and NBC on Thanksgiving Day was 45.4 million, representative of the largest average NFL audience on the holiday.
“It’s the No. 1 pastime in this country [and] it is the No. 1 hobby for Americans to do is to sit down and watch football as a family,” Jay Binkley said. “It has taken over this country, [and] it has taken over television. Just wait until – it should be this week – the top-30 shows in the United States [for] the last year, they’ll be probably 20 or 21 live football games on there, and the Chiefs will be on there several times.”
Early reports suggest that the NFL could be interested in playing more games on Christmas Day next year despite the holiday falling on a Wednesday. The National Basketball Association typically has a slate of games on the day as well, with five matchups occurring throughout the day on ABC and ESPN. Aside from Christmas Day, the NFL also held its first-ever Black Friday football game, emanating from MetLife Stadium in a matchup between the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins. The league recently revealed that it is expanding its international schedule of games to eight for the 2024 campaign, including matchups in London, England; Munich, Germany; and São Paulo, Brazil.
“Use whatever technology you can do to get things right,” Jay Binkley asserted. “It’s all we ask for – just get things right. It’s getting tougher now because the camera angles are so good. The margin for error is not there; our patience is wearing thin when people have money decided on the line whether you call something or don’t.”
Throughout the year, the Kansas City Chiefs have been a ratings juggernaut, frequently being televised in prime-time slots and/or featured afternoon segments. With the popularity of quarterback Patrick Mahomes and tight end Travis Kelce, along with the rest of the star-studded supporting cast, the reigning Super Bowl champions have regularly captivated viewers and football fans from around the country. If the season were to end after Week 15, the Chiefs would be playing in an NFL Wild Card round matchup against the Buffalo Bills.
Peacock, NBCUniversal’s over-the-top (OTT) streaming service, will be the exclusive home of one of these games taking place on Saturday, Jan. 13, 2024. Should the Chiefs be scheduled to play on that day, Jay Binkley believes the team will end up being featured in the slot to drive viewership. The deal with the league, reportedly worth $110 million, will mark the second NFL contest exclusive to the streaming service on the season.
“The only good thing about the Bills-Chargers game on Peacock last week was I learned that we have Peacock in my family, so I can watch Peacock,” show producer JT Noah said, elucidating on how it comes in a bundle with Xfinity Cable.
Binkley expounded on how he goes about watching football games, utilizing two televisions in order to consume as much of the action as possible. The part of the media landscape he finds to be laborious today is in having to continuously enter and exit different applications to watch programs. Various cable television remotes have a functionality permitting viewers to quickly return to the previous channel they were watching, preventing hassle in toggling between different shows and networks.
“I like flipping channels like normal human beings have always been able to do since the invention of remote controls where you can flip between games just by pushing a button [instead of] getting out of an app and going back in and letting it circle because your WiFi’s down for a bit,” Jay Binkley said. “It’s amazing how backwards we’ve gone.”
