Hasta La Creative!

Picture Oakland Raiders defensive end Khalil Mack dismantling a scrawny 7-year-old trussed up in ill-fitting shoulder pads and then flinging a second combatant (even scrawnier) into a pyramid of halftime oranges, and you’re halfway to understanding the dominance the NFL has over the TV landscape. The NFL’s reach is unwavering and relentless, even if the ratings took a bit of a hit last season.

Ah, yes. The ratings. In part because we live in an era in which pretty much everything can be politicized, you’re sure to hear a lot about the NFL’s TV ratings over the course of the season (as Sports Illustrated’s Jimmy Traina recently lamented, “Not another year of this bullshit”), but the fascination with the Nielsen numbers primarily speaks to football’s ability to gather an audience like nothing else on TV.

Case in point: In 2016, NFL games accounted for more than half of TV’s 50 most-watched broadcasts, and that was in a year that featured the Rio Summer Olympics, an unprecedentedly bizarre presidential campaign and a jaw-dropping, history-making World Series. In the relatively unoccluded year that was 2015, the league notched 37 of TV’s 50 most-watched broadcasts.

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