Why The NFL Is Failing

The NFL has fumbled its historically high ratings. Average viewership is significantly down compared to last year and many pundits are scrambling to name the cause. The common sources being thrown around are increased interest in the presidential election, controversy surrounding players taking a knee during the national anthem, and consumer trends shifting from cable TV to cord-cutting. I believe these ideas do shed some light on the situation but fail to diagnose the true underlying problem plaguing the NFL. By taking a design-thinking approach to this problem I will offer insight to what’s really going on as well as a creative solution to fix it.

To truly understand the problem we need to look at all of the data. I believe there are four key data metrics that paint the full story to the ratings decline. These are NFL viewership before the presidential election, NFL viewership after the presidential election, college football viewership, and NFL game attendance. When looking at these metrics, we see that NFL viewership was down considerably before the presidential election and then saw a rebound after the election. The viewership is still lower than last year but there is a noticeable spike in viewership post election. Additionally, college football viewership is only marginally down compared to last year unlike the significant drop experienced by the NFL. And finally NFL game attendance has basically remained the same as last year.

The pundits interpret the data to mean political climate effected viewership most. The rally in viewers after the presidential election suggests that fans followed the election instead of the NFL and the strong college football ratings suggests that the national anthem put fans off of the NFL but not college football. These are reasonable conclusions and I believe they are mostly true, but there is one significant conclusion that isn’t being made—the drop in viewership is mostly from casual NFL viewers. The fact that stadiums are being filled just the same as last year suggests that the hard-core fans were unfazed by the political climate and it was the casual viewer who opted to consume other forms of media. So what exactly caused the casual viewer to turn off the NFL?

It started when a few NFL players used the national anthem as a platform to make a political statement. Ordinarily this wouldn’t have been a big deal but the media blew up the controversy and made it a heated talking point. The controversy was plastered on TV, in newspapers, and across social media. After the first week nearly everyone was aware of vocal people that were not happy about athletes sitting out the national anthem. And when the athletes continued to sit out the national anthem each week, it allowed the media additional opportunities to cover the controversial story. Unfortunately this caused consumers to associate the NFL with the largely negative story.

The effect of the story on the NFL was similar to the effect Apple’s “I’m a Mac vs. I’m a PC” marketing campaign had on Microsoft. Apple’s campaign was brilliant in its message that Macs are the hip, reliable computer and PCs are the nerdy, bloated computer. The message was everywhere in the media and in the public conscious and had a strong effect on the public perception of both Macs and PCs. It was so successful that, one year after launching the campaign, Mac sales were up 12%, Apple’s sales in general were up 39%, and most college students today own Macs. The key to this success was targeting the casual computer user. The hard-core PC fan wasn’t swayed by the campaign but the casual PC user was influenced by the shifting public perception. This user hadn’t sworn allegiance to Windows and their perception of PCs was altered enough to make them purchase a new Mac. We saw a similar thing play out with the NFL.

The hard-core NFL fans weren’t swayed by the negative media attention and, for the most part, continued to watch and attend NFL games. But the casual NFL viewers who only passively watched games were influenced by the negative media attention. The negative perception of the NFL was enough to cause them to opt for other forms of entertainment instead of the occasional football game. Compounding the negative perception of the NFL was a drop in excitement this season. Notable players Peyton Manning and Marshawn Lynch retired after last season, Tom Brady served suspensions early this season, and Cam Newton, who drew excitement to the NFL last year, played a disappointing season this year. It’s my belief that this year the casual football fan perceived the NFL to be both less exciting and surrounded in negative controversy and it’s this perception that caused the record decrease in viewership. There was also a negative feedback loop where the media would report on the dropping NFL numbers and further alter the public’s perception that the NFL was less exciting this year, causing even more casual viewers to skip watching games and reinforce the negative story. The rally in ratings we saw after the election was in part due to casual viewers tuning in again now that the election wasn’t stealing their attention and partly due to the regular season drawing to a close so each game was more important and therefore more exciting. Unfortunately for the NFL their public perception is still tainted months after the election as evident by the continued low viewership numbers.

So what can the NFL do to change its public perception and target the casual viewer? The solution has to do with storytelling. Everyone, regardless of how much they follow sports, enjoys a good story. You saw the power of storytelling in sports this summer with the Rio Olympics. Events were broadcast on a delay so short background stories of each competing athlete could be woven into the program. This allowed a more engaging experience for viewers not familiar with the athletes or the nuances of each sport. The NFL should adopt a similar approach to engage non-sports fans but also ensure they don’t impede the experience of current sports fans. The best solution is a series of weekly documentaries that follow each team and highlight their training, practice, and experience between games. There are currently many YouTube vloggers with huge followings who basically just document their lives so doing something similar with professional athletes has the potential to be a big hit. It could be similar to Netflix’s Last Chance U and HBO’s Hard Knocks but each NFL team would have their own series. A series like this allows current fans to follow their favorite teams on a more personal level and allows non-football fans a chance to form a personal connection with a team and ultimately leads to them watching more NFL games. With this new avenue of engaging casual viewers, the NFL would just need a way to generate excitement again to finally shed their negative public perception.

The best way for them to generate excitement after a negative season is to engage social media. The NFL should upload their team documentary series to YouTube so they reach the greatest number of young people possible. Having the episodes and clips on YouTube will also allow people to easily share them on social media and further promote their product, generating excitement for both the documentary series and the NFL in general. The beauty of using the documentary series to generate excitement is that the media would be talking about it before the NFL regular season starts since they would document players’ preseason experiences. Having the media talk about it and generate buzz leading into the first week of games would allow the public perception of the NFL to start off with positive momentum and hopefully create a positive feedback loop unlike the negative feedback loop seen this season. Assuming the public reacts to the series as I expect, the NFL would likely see their biggest boost in viewership yet.

So it turns out the pundits are on the right track to diagnosing the problem plaguing the NFL but, by failing to account for the negative branding caused by the media, they fail to realize the severity of the public’s negative perception. The only way to truly grow NFL viewership again is to engage the casual viewer and use social media to boost positive public perception. This approach will increase casual viewership excitement and put NFL ratings back on top.