Posted on 10/13/2017 10:50:32 AM PDT by Snickering Hound
As the controversy around NFL players protesting during the national anthem percolates, sports executives are wary about how it is impacting their business.
Asked this week at the AXS Ticketing Symposium whether the controversy is affecting the NFL’s business, Houston Texans president Jamey Rootes said, “I think it’s starting to.”
While Rootes said the Texans are still filling NRG Stadium to capacity and that no sponsors have jumped ship, he added, “It’s just in feedback we’ve gotten. Like, ‘Hey, this is not good for the game.’ Or ‘This is not good for my connection to the Houston Texans.’ …
“We’ll get through this like we have with other challenges before. The question is how quickly we’ll get back to normalcy,” Rootes said.
Rootes’ comments typify the tone at the conference attended by some of the top executives in the sports industry.
One unnamed exec told SportsBusiness Daily, “We love our jobs because we’re in the fun business. Well, these days, the job isn’t much fun.”
(Excerpt) Read more at sportingnews.com ...
Exactly. The damage has been done to the NFL brand. We learned they’re unpatriotic liberals.
And TV ratings are dropping a bit, but will probably level off.
But the next big sign of trouble will come next spring when season tickets sales are down across the league, as corporations decline to renew.
Dick Fuld thought Real Estate would come back in 2008. The label says ‘National’ but they hate us. They won’t respect the flag, but the logo looks like our flag.
I’ve never seen so much stupidity.
Yup. And, as an original PSL holder for the Texans, I will NOT be attending any more games this year. I’ve sold them all - and while not breaking the bank, I didn’t lose money.
Start losing? The Texans have been fairly mediocre from their inception. In good years, they typically finish 8-8 or 9-7. Not a losing season, and just enough for the fans to hold out hope that "next year will be their year".
Aw, here’s a quarter. Call someone who cares.
Good!
That’s true, they’ve been lucky to be in the sorriest division in the NFL. It seems like all the teams there compete to come in last. They typically lose to teams outside their division. And they’re almost guaranteed at least 4 games since they play Jacksonville & Tennessee twice a season.
It’s divisions like theirs that point to the need to go by win-loss records instead of division standings.
I don't know. I don't think it will go away, but I think it has probably already peaked. There is a perfect storm of protests/brain injury/broadcast market changes that will keep chipping away at the audience, until is flattens out at some lower level, maybe 50% of what it is now.
A good thing to compare the situation football is in today would be horse racing. In the first half of the 20th century, horse racing was the top spectator sport. Then the media market changed, just like now with football. Television came to people's living rooms, and broadcasters wanted to televise horse races. They said no, because they didn't want to cannibalize their audience who went to the tracks. So television turned to football, eager for an audience, and that was it for horse racing. It is still around, but it is no longer America's sport, and never will be again. I think football will become the horse racing of the twenty first century, still there, but a shadow of its former self.
Yep.
I think the depth of the offense that these ‘protestors’ were allowed to perpetrate just because of their race, has destroyed the thought of ever watching another game in the hearts of a pretty significant amount of former viewers.
I don’t tune in to watch racist blacks OR whites do anything.
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