New York (CNN Business)-One month into the 2021 season, the NFL’s viewership is up around 17% compared to this time last year. The league is attracting an average of roughly 17 million viewers across its various network partners, according to Nielsen data.
Those numbers are not only pretty good, but also represent a turnaround from last year. Patrick Crakes, a former Fox Sports executive turned media consultant, is not surprised.
“It’s defied every trend inside media for a decade,” Crakes told CNN Business. “Why wouldn’t it continue to?”
The NFL is the the most reliable ratings driver on TV. This is why NBC, CBS, ESPN/ABC, Fox and Amazon paid more than $100 billion to renew their media contracts with the league earlier this year.
But the NFL’s ratings have ebbed and flowed over the past few years, with last year’s ratings down about 10% from 2019, so it is notable that viewership has bounced back so considerably.
Here are few reasons why….Read More