Hasta La Creative!

After a seemingly interminable hibernation, the NFL roard back onto the nation’s airwaves Thursday night, and while the ratings for the Panthers-Broncos showdown weren’t as robust as last season’s opener, NBC’s broadcast still squashed everything in its competitive set.

According to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, the NFL Kickoff game averaged 25.2 million viewers, which marked a decline of 8% compared to last year’s Steelers-Patriots grudge match, which drew 27.4 million viewers. The year-over-year drop in the guaranteed metric was slightly more pronounced, as Denver’s 21-20 victory drew a 14.6 household rating, down 10% versus a 16.2.

NBC noted that the average-minute audience who streamed the game was 278,000 viewers. In other words, streaming accounted for just 1.1% of the game’s overall deliveries.

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-Publicis Seattle launched “Love Triangle” for T-Mobile (video above).

-Want to hit creative directors with cream pies? Ogilvy London has you covered.

-Managing director Sara Tate is leaving Mother London.

-Digiday takes a look at the “cottage industry of animal influencer agencies.”

-FCB Canada made a series of executive appointments, promoting Tim Bowen to chairman and Tyler Turnbull to CEO of FCB Canada. 

-Lee vice president, marketing Kim Yates swears “We’re not just mom jeans.”

–The new season of Young Glory has begun with Gary Steele and Hagan de Villiers from TBWASingapore as judges.

Amazon is pursuing video rights to a wide range of sports, including the French Open tennis championship and professional rugby, as the company looks for ways to draw new customers to its online TV service, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The world’s largest online retailer has expressed interest in sports with global appeal, such as tennis, golf, soccer and auto racing, said the people, who took part in talks and asked not to be identified discussing private business plans. Amazon is also interested in popular U.S. sports, such as basketball and baseball, though most rights are unavailable for the foreseeable future.

With live sports, Amazon could offer programming viewers can’t get from rivals like Netflix, and erode the traditional media companies’ hold on some of the most valuable TV fare. Seattle-based Amazon already spends billions of dollars a year to offer TV shows and movies on demand and has been exploring the creation of a live online pay-TV service since late 2015.

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When we think of the word “creativity,” professional athletes are not the first people who come to mind unless, perhaps, they double as pop stars, fashion designers or memoirists.

Success in sports is all about a winning combination of inborn talent, practice and self-discipline, right? Probably. But maybe there’s also something of an art to it. 72andSunny’s newest spot for Adidas argues that any authentic athlete also needs a bit of that wild style.

This kind of makes sense given that every athlete is now also a “brand,” Even Marshawn “I Don’t Give a Shit” Lynch.

So this is a dig at Under Armour, which is somehow perceived to be all about training and becoming the world’s greatest at some given task like Michael Phelps or Tom Brady.

The spot features a bunch of athletes we don’t necessarily recognize who are famous for being famous in addition to being good at the thing they get paid to do. The last lines ask, “If you call yourself an athlete, create something. Why are you even here?” That would be beyond, you know, playing an organized game to the best of your ability with the ultimate goal of defeating your opponents and justifying your ridiculously inflated salary.

Lots of athletes want to be noticed, though. It’s a little hard to stand out when everybody does a fancy dance in the end zone. As the not-hero of that classic consumerist propaganda film The Incredibles put it: “When everyone’s super … no one is.”

Cue maniacal laughter.

Part of the enduring appeal of “Sunday Night Football” lies in its unmatched reach in primetime. According to Nielsen live-same-day data, last season’s Sunday night slate averaged a staggering 22.5 million viewers and a 13.0 household rating, which marked a 5% increase from the prior season. Whereas every high-profile scripted series last season suffered significant ratings erosion — TV’s top-rated drama, “The Walking Dead,” saw its C3 numbers drop 15%, while the No. 1 comedy “The Big Bang Theory” fell 14% — “Sunday Night Football’s” growth suggested that the NFL may well be the last remaining TV property that is immune to the ravages of time-shifting/cord-cutting/millennial drift/Netflix-and-chill.

Of course, “Sunday Night Football” is hardly the only game in town. In fact, it’s not even the highest-rated NFL package, if you compare it to the Fox and CBS late-national games that kick off at around 4:20 p.m. ET on alternate Sundays. Last season, Fox’s NFC-heavy slate averaged a whopping 27.4 million viewers and a 15.7 household rating, making it the most-watched, highest-rated show on TV, while CBS’s complementary package was no slouch itself, with an average draw of 25.1 million viewers and a 14.6 household rating. By way of comparison, Game 7 of this summer’s riveting NBA Finals drew a 15.8 household rating on ABC.

Given the huge numbers that Fox and CBS post on autumnal Sunday afternoons, the going rates for commercials in their respective late-game packages are predictably elevated. According to buyers, Fox is charging around $741,811 for each 30-second increment in its eight-game juggernaut, which is replete with appearances by the NFL’s two top-rated teams (Packers, Cowboys) and the Cardinals, who football junkies say have a real shot at representing the NFC in Super Bowl LI. CBS, for its part, is charging around $684,412 a pop for time in a stack of games that includes a clash of AFC antagonists New England and Pittsburgh and a Christmas Eve Cardinals-Seahawks scrum that has “playoff implications” stamped all over it.

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