The Super Bowl averaged just below 100 million viewers a few days ago. Television numbers were pretty good this year even if in-person attendance went in the opposite direction. The NFL is coming up on what should be historic television deals in 2021 — assuming there isn’t an extremely extended work stoppage due to the CBA expiring in 2020. Everything is rainbows, sunshine, peaches, cream, cherries on top and any other description of great for the NFL when it comes to television. Well, that is except for this:
The graying of TV continues. Median age for the Super Bowl on Sunday was 49.1. Last year it was 47.7.
— SportsTVRatings (@SportsTVRatings) February 4, 2020
Yes, the NFL isn’t Major League Baseball, which had the oldest average age of its viewers at 57 in 2017. Football’s average age of its viewers was at 50. That’s better. It’s still not the NBA (42) or soccer (39).
A 1.5-year median age jump in one year for the Super Bowl should be a slight concern. After all, just staying at the same rate should make the average median age 48.7.
No league wants to be associated with an aging fanbase. Older fans age out of viewership. It’s simple logic to point out that younger fans have a longer lifetime value to the leagues, and there are other benefits to a younger fan base. It’s easier to market the game as something cool. Brands get the association effect or halo from a league with younger fans and then those brands resonate with the view. Bud Light doesn’t want to be seen by young impressionable customers as associated with something that only old people drink while watching an old person NFL game.
And that’s where we come to the median age of fans watching the Super Bowl on television. Yes, Fox, CBS, ESPN/ABC, NBC, and whatever other traditional television rights holder will be throwing tons of money at the NFL. It will be billions of dollars. The price is only going up from where it is now. It just might not be the most money the league can get out of these television providers because of that median age of viewers ticking upwards.
So the NFL will do the obvious thing and move toward streaming providers. They likely won’t want to go with an exclusive provider. ESPN/ABC will want content for ESPN+. YouTubeTV, Amazon, Facebook, DAZN, and other streaming providers will want to get their hands on NFL content as well. The less exclusivity, the less valuable it is to a provider. So not only will TV compete with traditional television competition, but they will also be competing with the cord-cutting generation.
That’s where the NFL lags behind the NBA. This isn’t an immediate problem. It’s probably not a problem five years down the line. It could be a problem in 10-15 years — assuming the leagues are still around then. The NBA has done a great job leveraging social and digital media to lay the groundwork for long-term growth. It feels like the NFL is slightly behind. At least these leagues are MLB which essentially bans anything cool from going up on social media without the expressed consent of Major League Baseball. The NFL isn’t nearly that bad.
It’s just something to think about. Again, it’s not an immediate threat, but it’s time to start thinking about the long bending arc of the business. Roger Goodell isn’t just the steward for the game that just celebrated its 100th anniversary for the next five years. He is responsible for the vision 10 to 15 years down the line. The aging customer should be one of the top things every league worries about. Maybe the NFL just needs to turn an eye to that a bit early to set itself up for continued success and growth far down the line.
That should be easy. Invest in more digital media. Monetize and license content through YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter, and anything else under the sun that may contain content — even if that content isn’t normally allowed on the site. Discuss those changes with television partners and prepare them for streaming deals. Work closely with streaming providers to figure out the best distribution policies and remember the next generation of fans may never know what a cable bill actually is. At that point, the median TV viewership number doesn’t matter. Because only old people will be watching TV.