Explaining the NFL's Ratings Dip in 2012

What is behind football's ratings declines in 2012?

By Sarah Barry James

The NFL is easily the biggest thing on TV right now. But is it getting smaller?

Based on an analysis of Nielsen ratings data from Horizon Media Senior Vice President of Research Brad Adgate, it certainly appears to be. Looking at live-plus-same-day ratings information, Adgate found that for the 101 nationally televised football games in 2012, the average audience was 16.6 million viewers, a decline of 4.8% from 2011.

“The NFL is a monster.”   –– Chris Bevilacqua, co-founder of Bevilacqua Helfant Ventures

Looking at the individual networks, Sunday Night Football on NBC averaged 21.4 million viewers, making it the most-watched show on prime time by a wide margin. However, the 2012 figure represented a slight decline from 2011, when average viewership was 21.5 million. According to Adgate, it was the second-straight year with a declining average audience for the Sunday night matchups on NBC.

NFL games on CBS, meanwhile, averaged 17.7 million viewers in 2012, down from 18.4 million in the prior year. On FOX, NFL games averaged 19.8 million viewers, down from 20.1 million in 2011. ESPN's average NFL audience, meanwhile, dipped by 3.3% in 2012 to 12.8 million from 13.3 million in 2011, and Adgate noted that the 2012 figure represented ESPN's lowest average audience since 2008.

With all of these declines, it would be easy to be alarmed. After all, many programmers and advertisers believe that live sports stands as the final bulwark protecting both ratings and advertising.

But Adgate said it would be a mistake to be overly concerned.

"In terms of how serious this erosion is, my feeling is it's not all that serious," he told SNL Kagan. "It's not like these are drastic drops; it's not like, 'Oh my God, they've lost 25% of their audience.' They've only lost a few percentage points."

He added that it would be myopic to focus only on the declines without considering the NFL's continued ratings dominance. "It's the second year in a row that it's dipped a little bit, ... so you can look at it that way and say the glass is half-empty," he said. "But you can look at it and say it's half-full by noting that an afternoon football game on Sunday still does better than any show on prime-time TV except Sunday Night Football."

According to Adgate, excluding football, the top-rated prime-time show in 2012 was CBS' "The Big Bang Theory," which averaged 15.4 million viewers.

Given that the NFL on FOX beat "Big Bang" by more than 4 million average viewers, and that the NFL on CBS beat the show by more than 2 million average viewers, Adgate said, "In this day and age, these audiences are impressive even if it's down a little bit from a year or two ago."

As another sign of the NFL's continued strength, Adgate pointed to the popularity of postseason games and the Super Bowl in particular. "Since 2005, the audience for the Super Bowl has increased every year," he said, noting that the game attracted 111 million viewers in 2012, up 25 million from the 86 million viewers who watched in 2005.

Chris Bevilacqua, co-founder of the sports advisory firm Bevilacqua Helfant Ventures, agrees that the NFL is not on any sort of decline.

"The NFL is a monster," he said in an interview with SNL Kagan. "While all other programming splinters and audiences fragment, the NFL more so than any other genre of programming is holding its own and actually increasing in some cases."

Indeed, the NFL Network saw its average audience increase in 2012, attracting 6.4 million viewers compared to 6.2 million in 2011.

In terms of explaining the slight declines that the broadcast networks and ESPN saw, Bevilacqua noted that more sports fans may be watching games on mobile devices or tablets. "You've got people that can watch it on different devices, which aren't necessarily measured by the measuring community," he said. "The NFL has a deal with Verizon [Wireless] and their new deals with all of the networks are going to include TV Everywhere — so you are going to be able to watch this stuff in more places. And then you have all the out-of-home viewing in bars and other places."

Given these factors, Bevilacqua said it is almost surprising that the declines in average viewership for 2012 are not larger. "It just seems to me that in this world of disaggregation, the NFL has continued to have incredibly strong viewership while others are going the other way," he said.

As for Adgate, he also believes that increased viewing on mobile devices could be having an impact, especially among younger viewers. But he also wonders whether NFL RedZone is also taking a toll.

The network, which airs on Sunday afternoons and offers extended highlights from any number of games being played across the country, "might have siphoned off viewers" from the broadcast networks, according to Adgate. The channel recently expanded its footprint through deals with Time Warner Cable Inc. and Google Inc.'s Google Fiber.

Even if offerings like RedZone or TV Everywhere might be taking a toll on the ratings for the broadcast networks and ESPN, Bevilacqua said it would be a mistake for the NFL to pull back on providing access to game content. "The easier you can make it for the consumer to get to your product, so long as you are getting paid for it in a business model that works, the more people that will be able to watch it," he said.

And the more that is available, the more people will watch, Bevilacqua said. "There is no question that in terms of fan consumption, the market for NFL programming is not saturated. There seems to be an insatiable appetite for NFL programming."