And attendance is down in some places.
The Rams barely fill up.half of LA Coliseum.
The Chargers can’t even sell out their 27,000 seat temporary home at a soccer stadium.
Could football be on the decline in popularity? We’ll see.
Decades ago, horse racing and boxing were very popular. While they are still out there, they have greatly declined from their peak popularity. The NFL could find itself heading in that direction.
It is interesting to compare horse racing to football. It was the number one spectator sport in America in the first half of the twentieth century. But when television came out and wanted to broadcast horse races, the sport came out against it, because they wanted people at the races, and didn't want to cannibalize their audience. But the little known NFL jumped at the chance to get on TV, and soon football became America's number one spectator sport.
Football lasted as long as television lasted, but now we have people cutting their cable, watching media on all kinds of devices, and watching very focused streaming entertainment. Time for another shift in America's favorite sport.
“Could football be on the decline in popularity?”
Wouldn’t be at all surprised. Seems to be a perfect storm against audience loyalty: men are turned off by the blatant politics and political correctness; women are being primed against “toxic masculinity” (and there’s a whole lot of masculinity in football), parents are being warned of brain injuries in the game; and kids are being steered to soccer instead of football. It would take a miracle to resurrect football today.