Respected Organization Confirms NFL Ratings Tanked Due to National Anthem Protests
A subject of much speculation is why television ratings for the National Football League unexpectedly dropped in 2016.
Many pointed out to the contentious election battle between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton but after the votes had been cast, the ratings were still sinking.
Others claimed that the NFL’s failure to address the disrespect shown to the flag when former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and a number of other oppressed millionaire meatheads refused to stand for the national anthem.
Now the answer is in via highly respected research firm J.D. Power which just released a study that confirms that it was indeed Kaepernick and his toxic anti-American, anti-police attitudes that were given attention by a liberal media that torpedoed ratings.
Sports Insight: How Did Off-Field Factors Affect NFL Viewership and Attendance Among Sports Fans? See the report: https://t.co/wkPtyVlxGL pic.twitter.com/RuUaSlXUnm
— J.D. Power (@JDPower) July 27, 2017
It Turns Out Everyone Stopped Watching The NFL Because Of Their National Anthem Protests https://t.co/IbU8JWSC2Q @benshapiro pic.twitter.com/mZ3C7Br0sm
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) July 30, 2017
According to the Daily Wire “It Turns Out Everyone Stopped Watching The NFL Because Of Their National Anthem Protests”:
According to a new poll from J.D. Power, the #1 reason fans decided not to watch the NFL last year was the national anthem protests, which ended up spreading to several teams and multiple players. Fully 26% of people who said they watched less NFL content last year said they did so because of the national anthem nonsense. Another 24% said that domestic violence and delay of game penalties kept them away.
This is the second major poll to confirm that Leftist politics drove Americans from watching football. In October 2016, 56% of fans said that they believed ratings were down because of the national anthem protests.
Which means that the Left’s unwavering desire to infuse politics into even the most apolitical content comes with a cost: alienation of an audience that disagrees. While polls showed that the vast bulk of Americans despised the national anthem protests, those statistics polarized by race: 63% of white Americans disliked the protests, and a plurality of Hispanics disapproved (45 percent to 36 percent), but fully 74% of black Americans liked the protests. Overall, 54% of Americans opposed the protests, with just 38% approving.
The racial polarization that gripped the nation over the last several years thanks to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and President Obama’s decision to humor racially divisive politics didn’t leave football untouched. And the Leftists at the sports networks, in an attempt to mirror their political idols at the Democratic Party, celebrated as their own industry imbibed from the intersectional bottle. The cost: ratings.
You just can’t sum it up any better than that.
Fans have long turned to sports for an escape from the woes of the workaday world and expect to be able to spend at least a few hours every week away from politics.
Kaepernick and the media made it impossible to do that and a lot of people suddenly found that they had better ways to spend their Sunday afternoons than being forced to watch such garbage.
While liberals and their media lackeys are loathe to admit it, there still exists a thing called patriotism which millions embrace and when a clueless lout like Kaepernick basically wipes his ass with the flag, they aren’t happy.
The NFL’s problems were self-inflicted in this case by failing to be accused of racism and not shutting Kaepernick down immediately before he became a national hero to the race-baiters and misfits.
Now they are paying in the only place that really matters to a game turned into a corporation with global aspirations – their bottom line.
Whether ratings bounce back in 2017 is unknown but the fact that Kaepernick remains unemployed indicates that the league understands that they blew it.
