Since it’s not likely to be featured in the annual Academy Awards Death Montage, it is perhaps only fitting that we take a moment to pour out a few adult beverages to the memory of the NFL-is-doomed narrative, a canard propped up in large part by Russian bots, our nation’s shouty chief executive and a whole bunch of casual observers who don’t understand the first thing about the TV business.
Through Week 13 of the 2018 NFL season, the league’s broadcast partners are on pace to win back a good chunk of the ratings declines they’d endured over the past two years, and the improving deliveries and healthy demand for commercial inventory in and around the games has set the scatter market booming. According to Nielsen data, all NFL TV windows are currently averaging 16 million viewers and a 9.3 household rating, which marks a 5 percent gain compared to the year-ago 15.2 million viewers/8.9 rating. And if a late-season run of high-profile games pays off in accordance with historical precedent, the final numbers for this season could pull even with the 2016 TV stats.
Before we get into some of the particulars of the ad marketplace, it may be worth taking a look at why the networks are enjoying their first NFL ratings boost in three years. While assigning causality to any human behavior is to traffic in a sort of woozy speculation, it doesn’t take the analytic wiles of a B.F. Skinner to arrive at the conclusion that an explosion of scoring has helped boost the league’s TV deliveries.
Continue reading at AdAge.com
