NFL television viewership and attendance are going in opposite directions

It’s been a good year for the NFL and its partners when it comes to television ratings. Buoyed by interesting, young, up-and-coming quarterbacks and some marquee teams winning – the Patriots – and struggling – hello Cowboys, ratings were up this …

It’s been a good year for the NFL and its partners when it comes to television ratings. Buoyed by interesting, young, up-and-coming quarterbacks and some marquee teams winning — the Patriots — and struggling — hello Cowboys, ratings were up this year for every television partner.

That’s good seeing that the NFL gets most of its income from television deals and those deals are all coming up after 2021. The league has rebounded from a few down years recently — for whatever reason fits your fancy — to show that it’s still the king of the hill when it comes to live sports content.

The only problem for the league is that although television ratings are up — again, good — it seems like people aren’t actually going to games at the stadium — this would be bad.

Some of this trend could be self-inflicted. The NFL lifted its blackout rules meaning that games are no longer taken off the air locally if a team doesn’t sell out their home game. That’s a good thing. Games are expensive and building a fan base is important. Television is the best way to reach young viewers. Blackouts just seemed like cruel and unusual punishment. Teams were buying up extra seats to make sure their game was aired in local markets.

Of course, there could be bigger problems for the NFL. Younger fans — read the future of their cashflow — may just eschew the whole experience. Going to a game is a lot of work. Fans need to wake up early to make it a real event — read: tailgating in the parking lot. They need to sit in traffic to get to most games since some stadiums are located in city-center. They need to pay for parking. Concessions are expensive. WiFi at stadiums is improving but it’s not reliable so young fans can feel disconnected. The game moves slowly at the stadium with a lot of stops — where on television it feels quicker than it is. After all, is said and done, fans then need to pack up their vehicle, sit in traffic, and miss whatever games are on after the game they just traveled. In short, going to a game is inconvenient and annoying and the younger demographic is not into anything that takes a lot of time, effort, and doesn’t provide a bunch of returns. Sure, they’ll go to playoff games, but that game against the Bengals in Week 13 isn’t a hot ticket.

Let’s not pretend owners don’t care about this issue either. There’s a reason they want to cut down on preseason games. No one is coming to the stadium. There’s also a reason they won’t just give preseason games up. It makes them money when people come to see a game live.

This isn’t a huge problem for the league since it makes most of its money on television deals, sponsorship dollars, and luxury box sales, but it is an issue. The way revenue is split creates a situation where teams do rely on their ticket sales — since they can keep those — and they rely on concessions, parking, and sales on-site — since most of those aren’t split as well. Smaller market owners can stay afloat with the television money alone, but they aren’t going to see a return on their investment if they can’t create revenue at the stadium.

There’s no easy answer. Televisions, speakers, and the in-home product is going to get better as technology gets cheaper. Driving people to the game will be more difficult unless a team is a constant winner. The Patriots aren’t going to sell out every game if they miss the playoffs and Tom Brady leaves, Bill Belichick retires. Basically, the Cowboys can count on constant sell-outs and no one can.

The league will have to get creative. Owners will have to figure out activations and partnerships to drive younger fans to games. No one wants to watch a game on television where no one is in the stadium. The league could be creating that situation.