Every sports fan knows that the NFL dominates the American sports television landscape, but the extent to which the NFL dominates is sometimes overlooked.
At least, it's overlooked until the league sends out information boasting about its TV ratings, as it did today.
The Super Bowl is always the most-watched TV show of the year, but as the NFL noted in a release distributed to the media today, the six most-watched sporting events on TV since this year's Super Bowl are NFL games. Those are regular-season games, getting better ratings than the World Series, NBA Finals, March Madness or any other sporting event since the Super Bowl.
The NFL also noted that the average viewership of 17 million is the highest at this point in the season in 20 years, and that each network that shows NFL games has had increased viewership over last year.
So at a time when viewers have hundreds of channels and TV audiences are more fractured than ever before, the NFL still manages to draw tens of millions of viewers, every single Sunday.
NFL continues television dominance
Posted by Michael David Smith on November 11, 2009 2:21 PM ET
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19 Comments 
Latest stories in: Latest News and Rumors, NFL Mobile Exclusives - Rumors, Top Stories
Latest stories in: Latest News and Rumors, NFL Mobile Exclusives - Rumors, Top Stories
Brief summary of what's on television these days as I flip through the channels: metrosexual sitcom, metrosexual drama, metrosexual sitcom, infomercial, metrosexual talk show, biased news coverage, real extreme video caught on tape, infomercial, cheap boring show on History Channel, some other show that tortures the sensibilities of normal people, and NFL football.
It's no surprise what I want to watch.
And the reason behind behind the dominance: FANTASY FOOTBALl!!!
You think people would watch multiple games if their players were not playing? Nope. Even my wife now watches football religiously becuase of Fantasy Football.
This being said....
Just imagine how much more money the NFL would make if they opened up the Sunday Ticket option to cable.
But for some reason, they want to keep Direct TV in business. The ONLY reason that 95% of Direct TV subscribers have it is for the Sunday Ticket. Unbelievable.
When will they get a clue?
This could be a result of the recession and layoffs of millions in the past year. They now do not have to work during the week so sunday is not as important interms of running errands. They can do it any day of the week. Watch out for the return of manufacturing to this country because of continuing rises in fuel costs and the continued increase in college fees.
I think Honinbo is right, fantasy football has increased ratings. I know people (both with and without Sunday Ticket) who will watch a game just because they have one of the players on their fantasy team.
People are still watching their team's games, but now they actually care about other games as well. People end up watching more than 1 game a week.
Also, the format of 1 game a week leads to everyone watching that game. Baseball and basketball teams play so many games that fans can mis a few games and it doesnt really matter, decreasing their ratings.
king of chico, NFL has long been the choice of viewers way before the recession started and the fact that during the airing of NFL games there is practically NOTHING to watch, it's no wonder the NFL ratings are through the roof. I also believe that the TV networks know this so they tend to air "their" shows during weekdays and after Monday or even Thursday night football games to assure them a competitive chance for TV ratings. I very much doubt that on a non-recession year people are doing so many errands that NFL ratings would be affected.
Fantasy Football and Gambling. If they ever take away those two things and if the game keeps turning into soccer or some other gay sport like Basketball then they will not blow everyone out of the ratings book. That would be what it would take. Neither will ever happen so football can get away with becoming a gay sissy sport.
Fantasy players are probably more apt to be on their laptops tracking their team on Sunday afternoons than watching the one or two games in their market which feature no players on their fantasy teams.
2007, Brett Favre has career resurgance and leads 4-12 team to 13-3 and one OT away from Super Bowl.
2008, Brett captures the attention of the world, leaves the hated Packers, and joins the New York City Jets as the world watches.
2009, Brett Favre joins the Minnesota Vikings, leads them to a 7-1 start, pounds the hated Packers twice, all at age 40.
Coincidence? I think not. Brett is the biggest star in the history of the NFL and the numbers back it up.
i would agree that fantasy and gambling both probably play a roll. i would say that the programming being crap probably helps the nfl. as said before there isn't much on but stupid reality tv and metrosexual bs.
RayLewisIsGod directv rules. much better than cable in the denver area. they bend over backwards to keep their customers. what does cable do besides continue to raise prices?
It's probably because of Brett Favre, right? Right??
"This being said....
Just imagine how much more money the NFL would make if they opened up the Sunday Ticket option to cable.
But for some reason, they want to keep Direct TV in business. The ONLY reason that 95% of Direct TV subscribers have it is for the Sunday Ticket. Unbelievable.
When will they get a clue?"
Comcast has over 20 millions customers and so if you open it up to the world of Cable then that will most definitiely dent ticket sales....
Unfortunately, I wonder how much of that has to do with the economy. People use things like football to "get away" from more troubling "real world" stuff. Not to mention football is cheap to watch if you already have a TV - and most people do.
NFL Redzone is far better than the Sunday Ticket (which I had for years until I moved)....unless you live in an area where your home or otherwise favorite team is not shown.
"NFL Redzone is far better than the Sunday Ticket "
You get RZ with the Ticket anyway, so what is your point? You can't handle too much information and need someone to condense it for you?
That should make the NFLPA feel good about the upcoming labor negotiations . . .
cloudnine, im just curious how is nfl red zone better then nfl sunday ticket? is it because on nfl red zone they take u to a specific game when a team is in the red zone, and u have no control as to what game they decide to put on, as opposed to sunday ticket where u can watch any game any play u want without anyone just putting another game on bc it maybe more exciting to others. explain please bc i think ur the only one who would think so.
Imagine the ratings when the league renames itself to the Brett Favre League.
jwill007 says: November 11, 2009 3:52 PM
"This being said....
Just imagine how much more money the NFL would make if they opened up the Sunday Ticket option to cable.
But for some reason, they want to keep Direct TV in business. The ONLY reason that 95% of Direct TV subscribers have it is for the Sunday Ticket. Unbelievable.
When will they get a clue?"
Comcast has over 20 millions customers and so if you open it up to the world of Cable then that will most definitiely dent ticket sales....
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Got to respectfully disagree with you there, because 1, fans in the market allready are watching their team play games on TV and 2, it would probably have the same sort of effect on ticket sales that the internet had on book sales. If you think back to the mid to late 90's, people where convinced that the internet growing in popularity would kill the sales of paper books, in fact it drove sales to never before seen numbers (ever heard of amazon.com?) by allowing a casual fan in tampa bay to see a highly competitive game between Indy and the pats (a game which they wouldn't have seen otherwise due to the same time slot) might make them a more interested fan of one of those teams, and might bring them to the stadium in tamp when indy or the pats come to play (yeah, i know once every 6 years) but it might get them over to miami to see the pats, or over to jacksonville to see the colts once a year, both teams need the sales.