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I believe one of the biggest things that is keeping the NFL from going off the cliff is Fantasy Football.

Even people who know little or nothing are playing at work and keeping an eye on the games.

I agree about Fantasy Football helping to keep the NFL alive. There are several pools in my office alone and each of them costs hundreds of dollars to join. I don't have interest in it myself but this is a huge underground economy as I know that nobody is paying taxes on their winnings!

Also popular in my office is the Super Bowl pool in which you buy squares and then numbers are randomly assigned on the x and y axis. One of those pools was $100 a square ($10,000 in prizes).

As for attending the games, the majority of seats are either owned by corporations or by season ticket holders. So those seats will typically not go empty as they have already been paid for. My company owns some of this seating at various arenas and when we don't have clients to go, we are giving them to employees as incentives. Same with season ticket holders, either they will go to the games themselves or they will see that somebody goes in their place.

So the real indicator of declining interest in NFL football will be the TV attendance. Anybody into Fantasy Football likely has software that will tabulate the results of their teams so there is no need for them to actually watch the games.