National Football League officials weighed the fervor of players protesting racism against U.S. President Donald Trump’s anger at their autumn meeting on Tuesday with supporters of the players kneeling outside in solidarity.
Reuters reports the NFL did not seek commitments from its players to stop kneeling during pregame renditions of the U.S. national anthem but rather focused on helping them in their political activism.
“We spent today talking about the issues that our players have been trying to bring attention to. About issues in our communities to make our communities better,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told reporters.
Trump’s repeated denunciation of the players as unpatriotic for kneeling during the national anthem, which he reiterated as recently as Monday, has only made the practice more widespread.
His calls for fans to boycott games if players persist is an unwelcome prospect even for the world’s highest-grossing sports league and have forced the topic high up the agenda of this week’s regularly scheduled meeting in New York City.
The small but growing number of players who have taken to kneeling during the national anthem are protesting the killing by police of unarmed black men and boys across the United States, as well as racial disparities in the criminal justice system. More than half of all NFL players are black.
According to Nielsen data, the various NFL telecasts—including the Sunday regional and national games and the prime-time Sunday, Monday and Thursday night packages—are averaging 15.6 million viewers through Week 6, which is down just 5 percent from a year earlier. Household ratings are also down 5 percent to a 9.1 rating, off a half-point versus fom the period a year prior.
According to AdAge, ratings for two NFL windows, ESPN's "Monday Night Football" and the standalone NFL Network "Thursday Night Football" telecast, are up year-over-year, while deliveries for the CBS/NFL Net "TNF" simulcast package is flat. Fox's high-octane national windows are down 7 percent with an average draw of 24.2 million viewers and a 13.5 household rating, while NBC's "Sunday Night Football" juggernaut has slipped just 5 percent with an average turnout of 19 million viewers and a 10.8 household rating.
Thus far, the regional games have experienced the biggest drop in viewership. Through Week 6, the 1 p.m. games and single-headers are down 11 percent to 13.9 million viewers and an 8.2 household rating. Nonetheless, the only prime-time entertainment series to average a higher audience threshold is CBS's "Big Bang Theory," which over the course of its first three episodes of 2017-18 has averaged just under 15 million live-same-day viewers.
And advertisers have been steadfast in their interest. Through Week 6, in-game commercial inventory in the NFL broadcast windows has generated an estimated $1.24 billion in revenue, up 14 percent from the equivalent period last year.
Attendance is also nowhere near as shaky as Trump would like to believe. Season-to-date, NFL stadiums are averaging a draw of 64,277 fans per week, which marks a slight 3 percent year-to-year decline compared to the 66,496 fans who passed through the turnstiles during each of the first six weeks in 2016.