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Why Is There a NFL Ratings Crisis? Look No Further Than London, Thursday Games
- Updated: October 20, 2016
It’s 6:30 on Sunday morning, Angelenos. Do you know where your new NFL team is?
Why, it is kicking off in Merry Olde England, of course. The NFL allowed the Rams to return to Los Angeles and figured the best ways to engage a new generation of fans were to: A) take away a home date, and B) schedule back-to-back October games in the morning, local time. Last week’s Lions game began before the sports taverns fired up their grills. Sunday’s Giants game kicks off before the monsignor even wakes up.
The Rams were shipped across eight time zones to play the comic foil to Odell Beckham, whose mission is to entice international fans to buy Odell Beckham jerseys without doing anything that would get him penalized, like express an emotion. Europeans love watching Americans get weirdly Puritanical!
But hey, football fans can enjoy the novelty of waking up to images of Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, the only Big Ben they will see this weekend and other B-reel from the educational video Preschoolers’ Guide to World Monuments. We saw it all three weeks ago. We will see it again next week when the Redskins face the Bengals. It’s nothing to put off cleaning the gutters for.
At least the Thursday night game looks like a gem: Packers vs. Bears, one of the greatest rivalries in American professional sports! Unfortunately, the Bears lineup looks like it was taken from the third quarter of the first preseason game, and even Aaron Rodgers needs a good stiff belt before watching Aaron Rodgers play these days. Both teams have injury reports the length of Pixar movie credits. If these teams bored and frustrated you on Sunday, imagine what kind of show they will put on after four days’ rest.
Television ratings have dipped. Fan enthusiasm seems to be at an all-time low. The reason why is simple: The NFL’s “showcase” games showcase the league at its absolute worst.
It’s not your imagination: These games really stink.
Weak Tea and Stale Crumpets
Since 2011, the average London game has pitted a team arriving with a 3-3 record against one with a 1-4 record (2.9-and-2.6 versus 1.3-and-4.1, to be precise). So the NFL is basing an international marketing effort on mediocre teams facing bad ones.
The bad records of the London teams are not the result of bad luck, just bad design. Teams are scheduled in London according to a catch-as-catch-can labyrinth of agreements and compromises. The Jaguars are booked there through 2020. The Rams will rack up frequent-flyer miles for three years until their new stadium is built. Meanwhile, the Patriots quietly bowed out of a three-year London arrangement after pounding the Rams 45-7 in 2012.
So the NFL doesn’t start by saying, “How can we introduce international fans to Cam Newton or Ezekiel Elliott?” It collects teams whose ownership has soccer connections (Rams, Jaguars, Buccaneers), teams that owe the league relocation favors (Rams, Raiders soon) and small-market teams willing to trade home games for a sliver of worldwide brand recognition (Jaguars). The tired, poor and huddled masses, in other words.
No wonder the games are such a slog. The average final score of London games since 2011 is 34-18. Some games are blowouts, like the Patriots-Rams game and the 45-10 pounding the Chiefs gave the Lions last year. But even the close games often have a sloppy, bottom-division-Conference USA matchup quality about them. Which is a nice way of saying they are Jaguars games. The Jags have taken 17-point leads over the Bills and Colts in London over the last two years, only to allow late comebacks. If watching one of the worst teams …
