The election is over. Whether that’s a good thing for you is up to individual interpretation of the results. But for the National Football League, it couldn’t have come at a better time.
The first nine weeks of the NFL season saw the league’s television ratings regress at a clip we have never seen in the modern history of professional sports.
Consider this: Monday Night Football between the Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints in late September saw a 38 percent decrease from the same week last season (more on that here).
This has been a continuing theme through the first two months-plus of the NFL season. Whether it was due to a lack of a solid product on the field or the league going up against two different presidential debates in different weeks remains to be seen. Heck, it could have been a combination of the two.
But with the election now in our rear-view mirror, it looks like the NFL has found a way to recoup some the losses it saw earlier in the season.
NBC announced a solid 14.3 overnight rating for the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots. According to Pro Football Talk, this represented the best Week 10 Sunday Night Football rating in five years.
Meanwhile, potentially the best game of the season between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys Sunday afternoon drew a 17.8 overnight rating. That number represented a larger audience than any of the World Series games outside of the Chicago Cubs’ historical win in Game 7.
This could be a representation of the NFL previously being impacted by what was an especially “entertaining” election cycle that played out more like a reality television show than a process to choose our next president. Sunday’s uptick in ratings could have also been America’s way of avoiding the issues we’re seeing in our nation and on our streets post-election. An outlet of sorts.
Heck, it simply could be that both of these games were among the best versions of live NFL football we have seen all season.
Either way, the NFL itself isn’t going to complain.