Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has been saying for years that the NFL is heading for a massive decline, and he said today that he is rapidly being proven right.
Cuban told the Washington Post that his belief that the NFL was going too far in chasing every dollar and diluting its product in the process is bearing out in the league’s declining television ratings.
“The NFL still has great TV ratings relative to other shows,” Cuban said. “That said, I think the problem I outlined continues and is accelerating for the NFL.”
Cuban said he doesn’t believe young people like football the way they did in generations past.
“[The accelerating problem is] confirmed by the dramatic decline in participation by kids in tackle football and from a TV perspective the significant drop in viewing by millennials and younger,” he wrote. “The age of NFL viewers keeps on going up.”
It would be easy to dismiss Cuban’s comments as those of a guy who likes to hear himself talk, but Cuban was predicting the NFL’s ratings would decline at a time when few people felt that way — and that prediction proved correct. The NFL would be wise to consider whether Cuban has a point, and what the league can do to turn things around.