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that may be. but that's like saying, "XYZ is a killer app for vinyl" haha. football as a televised spectator sport? trending down. it's not dead, but where gro

that may be. but that's like saying, "XYZ is a killer app for vinyl" haha. football as a televised spectator sport? trending down. it's not dead, but where growth is measured, it is not good. the cultural thing this guy is talking about in the article, it's going away. fewer and fewer people every year value the aesthetic experience he is describing. TV ownership? trending down. they've never been cheaper for a reason. trend for TV production since peak TV? down. football as a gambling product? up. okay, do you see what i mean by bad growth? football mediated as betting stats on apps? up. draftkings, polymarket, ESPN fantasy app ARPPU? up. ESPN streaming app ARPU? down. comcast? hated, down, everyone is cheering for it to go down. do you see? there is no way to talk about specific instances of football (and stadium sports') cultural weaknesses without sounding really cringe. maybe just, "who cares?"

derektank 9mo ago
>TV ownership? trending down. Do you have sales or survey data to support this claim? I’m willing to believe individual households might be less likely to purchase TVs, but my understanding is that manufacturers are producing as many or even more screens than ever, though that might be for commercial or business use. Incidentally, it’s efficiency from this scale that allows manufacturers to sell televisions at such low prices, not a lack of demand.
- doctorpangloss 9mo ago
  haha well you wouldn't have thought that at some point in the past, tv set ownership was like 100%, so of course it has gone down, but it's still trending down. this also seems kind of obvious to me. Household Ownership Rate 2011 2020 2023 ------------------------------------- TV Set ~99% [3] 96% [3] 88% [1] Smartphone 35% [2] 85% [2] 90% [1] [1] https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/ces2024-smartphone-ownership-surpasses-tv-ownership-for-the-first-time https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/ces2024-smartphone-ownersh... [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/ [3] https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2020/nielsen-estimates-121-million-tv-homes-in-the-u-s-for-the-2020-2021-tv-season/ https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2020/nielsen-estimates-121-...
vessenes 9mo ago
Hmmm. NFL revenue continues to grow, with something like half of it from media licensing. So, I think you’re wrong. My son watches NFL on his laptop, but there’s little to distinguish how he watches it from the experience he would have on a Samsung tv - he’s not like in some chat group trying to get Ochocinco to write his name on a jersey - he’s passively consuming an edited video feed of a football game with commentary.
- doctorpangloss 9mo ago
  okay, let's look: Entity 2016 Rev 2024 Rev Nominal Real (Adj) --------------------------------------------------------- Netflix $8.8B [5] $39.0B [6] +341% +229% NBA $6.5B [3] $11.3B [4] +74% +30% NFL $14.0B [1] $23.0B [2] +64% +22% Inflation --- --- +34% [7] 0% i didn't say the NFL made less money, because i'm not stupid. i'm trying to describe a secular trend so i'm comparing the revenue growth in different media companies. looking at this table, a simple way to interpret this is, kind of obviously, netflix isn't really about presenting on TVs per se, they make a media platform, which performed way better than the NFL did, almost 10:1, which is really reinforcing my point no? for every 1 dollar someone gives NFL, consumers give Netflix 9. see? to me that is a trend going down, even if to you, it is a trend going up. depends what your benchmark is! another POV: other people do a better job at making NFL content than the NFL does, which is what you are saying your son is consuming. and listen, honestly, ask him if he or his friends bet on football... [1] https://www.footballscoop.com/news/report-nfl-rakes-14-billion-revenue https://www.footballscoop.com/news/report-nfl-rakes-14-billi... [2] https://www.sportspro.com/news/nfl-revenue-2024-financial-year-team-distribution-roger-goodell-april-2025/ https://www.sportspro.com/news/nfl-revenue-2024-financial-ye... [3] https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2016/10/24/In-Depth/Lead/ https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2016/10... [4] https://www.sportsvalue.com.br/en/nba-teams-surpassed-us-11-3-billion-in-revenue-in-2024-total-valuation-reached-us-132-8-billion/ https://www.sportsvalue.com.br/en/nba-teams-surpassed-us-11-... [5] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/revenue https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/reven... [6] https://www.wallstreetzen.com/stocks/us/nasdaq/nflx/revenue https://www.wallstreetzen.com/stocks/us/nasdaq/nflx/revenue [7] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
mrandish 9mo ago
> football as a televised spectator sport? trending down. AFAIC, NFL football is almost always the top 99 out of 100 most viewed television programs in the US every year. The Oscars usually manage to claw onto the list and in election years a couple presidential debates make it, displacing a few regular season games. Since your claim conflicts with my current understanding, I just had AI do a quick search of recent credible sources. Here's the summary: > "The claim that football (American football/NFL) as a televised spectator sport is trending down is not true based on recent data. >Regular season NFL viewership saw a minor dip of about 2.2% in 2024 (averaging 17.5 million per game), but rebounded strongly in 2025 with significant gains—averaging around 18.7 million viewers per game (up 10% from the prior season in some reports, marking the highest in 36 years or second-highest on record when including updated measurement methods like Nielsen's Big Data + out-of-home viewing). Networks like CBS, Fox, NBC, and Amazon all reported year-over-year increases, with streaming platforms showing particularly strong growth. > Super Bowl audiences continue setting records: Super Bowl LIX (2025) averaged 127.7 million viewers (up 3% from the previous year), marking consecutive record highs. Playoff games, including wild-card and divisional rounds, also showed double-digit increases in multiple cases. While some earlier seasons had slight declines (often tied to factors like election years or measurement changes), the overall trend since 2024-2025 has been upward, reinforcing the NFL's position as the dominant U.S. televised sport." Your impression may arise from shifting measurement platform data due to increasing out-of-home, mobile, streaming, DVR, etc viewership. Just comparing traditional old-school Nielsen in-home diary data alone hasn't been accurate for over a decade. Even if we discount recent cross-platform measurement data, the overwhelming dominance of NFL football is also well supported by the audited financial reports of what broadcasters and streamers pay the NFL and further by what advertisers pay for slots. The sheer money being paid dwarfs all other sports and types of television programming (news, drama, comedy, etc). The recent dramatic growth of legalized sports gambling in the US will likely push NFL viewership across all platforms and formats even higher.
- doctorpangloss 9mo ago
  > The Oscars usually manage to claw onto the list and in election years a couple presidential debates make it, displacing a few regular season games. the oscars audience is shrinking all TV broadcast is growing like 1/10th the rate as Netflix did in the past decade. That's my benchmark.
mrandish 9mo ago
I get that you don't like football and you don't like television, which is fine. As someone who's been analyzing video content industry trends for a few decades now, I just want to let you know you've reached some incomplete or misleading conclusions based a variety of category errors and assumptions. Traditional living room televisions are just one way of consuming video content. And "over-the-air broadcast" is just one way of distributing video content. Assuming broadcast television viewership shrinking also means less video is being created and consumed is like assuming music consumption is down because CD sales are down or the printed word is dying because fax machine sales are down. The reality is quite the opposite. Video content creation, distribution and consumption are all growing at very high rates and have been for a long time. The industry puts a lot of effort into reproducible, audited measurement and has developed deep understanding of how viewership has shifted and multiplied across video consumption platforms, consumption modes, and distribution channels - ranging from streaming long-form to social snacking. While it's true that broadcast television is shrinking and traditional living room TV sales are down, far more video content is being created, distributed and consumed today than ever before, and not by a little - the growth trends are explosive regardless of how we count: viewers, views, hours, titles, revenue or reach. All the metrics measured across the entire video content lifecycle reflect the same incredible growth. I suggest you focus on the myriad ways video content can be bad, is getting worse or has negative effects on kids, culture or human progress. But arguing video isn't growing is neither accurate nor necessary to support your point.

derektank 9mo ago

>TV ownership? trending down. Do you have sales or survey data to support this claim? I’m willing to believe individual households might be less likely to purchase TVs, but my understanding is that manufacturers are producing as many or even more screens than ever, though that might be for commercial or business use. Incidentally, it’s efficiency from this scale that allows manufacturers to sell televisions at such low prices, not a lack of demand.

doctorpangloss 9mo ago
haha well you wouldn't have thought that at some point in the past, tv set ownership was like 100%, so of course it has gone down, but it's still trending down. this also seems kind of obvious to me. Household Ownership Rate 2011 2020 2023 ------------------------------------- TV Set ~99% [3] 96% [3] 88% [1] Smartphone 35% [2] 85% [2] 90% [1] [1] https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/ces2024-smartphone-ownership-surpasses-tv-ownership-for-the-first-time https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/ces2024-smartphone-ownersh... [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/ [3] https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2020/nielsen-estimates-121-million-tv-homes-in-the-u-s-for-the-2020-2021-tv-season/ https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2020/nielsen-estimates-121-...

vessenes 9mo ago

Hmmm. NFL revenue continues to grow, with something like half of it from media licensing. So, I think you’re wrong. My son watches NFL on his laptop, but there’s little to distinguish how he watches it from the experience he would have on a Samsung tv - he’s not like in some chat group trying to get Ochocinco to write his name on a jersey - he’s passively consuming an edited video feed of a football game with commentary.

doctorpangloss 9mo ago
okay, let's look: Entity 2016 Rev 2024 Rev Nominal Real (Adj) --------------------------------------------------------- Netflix $8.8B [5] $39.0B [6] +341% +229% NBA $6.5B [3] $11.3B [4] +74% +30% NFL $14.0B [1] $23.0B [2] +64% +22% Inflation --- --- +34% [7] 0% i didn't say the NFL made less money, because i'm not stupid. i'm trying to describe a secular trend so i'm comparing the revenue growth in different media companies. looking at this table, a simple way to interpret this is, kind of obviously, netflix isn't really about presenting on TVs per se, they make a media platform, which performed way better than the NFL did, almost 10:1, which is really reinforcing my point no? for every 1 dollar someone gives NFL, consumers give Netflix 9. see? to me that is a trend going down, even if to you, it is a trend going up. depends what your benchmark is! another POV: other people do a better job at making NFL content than the NFL does, which is what you are saying your son is consuming. and listen, honestly, ask him if he or his friends bet on football... [1] https://www.footballscoop.com/news/report-nfl-rakes-14-billion-revenue https://www.footballscoop.com/news/report-nfl-rakes-14-billi... [2] https://www.sportspro.com/news/nfl-revenue-2024-financial-year-team-distribution-roger-goodell-april-2025/ https://www.sportspro.com/news/nfl-revenue-2024-financial-ye... [3] https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2016/10/24/In-Depth/Lead/ https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2016/10... [4] https://www.sportsvalue.com.br/en/nba-teams-surpassed-us-11-3-billion-in-revenue-in-2024-total-valuation-reached-us-132-8-billion/ https://www.sportsvalue.com.br/en/nba-teams-surpassed-us-11-... [5] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/revenue https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/reven... [6] https://www.wallstreetzen.com/stocks/us/nasdaq/nflx/revenue https://www.wallstreetzen.com/stocks/us/nasdaq/nflx/revenue [7] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

mrandish 9mo ago

> football as a televised spectator sport? trending down. AFAIC, NFL football is almost always the top 99 out of 100 most viewed television programs in the US every year. The Oscars usually manage to claw onto the list and in election years a couple presidential debates make it, displacing a few regular season games. Since your claim conflicts with my current understanding, I just had AI do a quick search of recent credible sources. Here's the summary: > "The claim that football (American football/NFL) as a televised spectator sport is trending down is not true based on recent data. >Regular season NFL viewership saw a minor dip of about 2.2% in 2024 (averaging 17.5 million per game), but rebounded strongly in 2025 with significant gains—averaging around 18.7 million viewers per game (up 10% from the prior season in some reports, marking the highest in 36 years or second-highest on record when including updated measurement methods like Nielsen's Big Data + out-of-home viewing). Networks like CBS, Fox, NBC, and Amazon all reported year-over-year increases, with streaming platforms showing particularly strong growth. > Super Bowl audiences continue setting records: Super Bowl LIX (2025) averaged 127.7 million viewers (up 3% from the previous year), marking consecutive record highs. Playoff games, including wild-card and divisional rounds, also showed double-digit increases in multiple cases. While some earlier seasons had slight declines (often tied to factors like election years or measurement changes), the overall trend since 2024-2025 has been upward, reinforcing the NFL's position as the dominant U.S. televised sport." Your impression may arise from shifting measurement platform data due to increasing out-of-home, mobile, streaming, DVR, etc viewership. Just comparing traditional old-school Nielsen in-home diary data alone hasn't been accurate for over a decade. Even if we discount recent cross-platform measurement data, the overwhelming dominance of NFL football is also well supported by the audited financial reports of what broadcasters and streamers pay the NFL and further by what advertisers pay for slots. The sheer money being paid dwarfs all other sports and types of television programming (news, drama, comedy, etc). The recent dramatic growth of legalized sports gambling in the US will likely push NFL viewership across all platforms and formats even higher.

doctorpangloss 9mo ago
> The Oscars usually manage to claw onto the list and in election years a couple presidential debates make it, displacing a few regular season games. the oscars audience is shrinking all TV broadcast is growing like 1/10th the rate as Netflix did in the past decade. That's my benchmark.

mrandish 9mo ago

I get that you don't like football and you don't like television, which is fine. As someone who's been analyzing video content industry trends for a few decades now, I just want to let you know you've reached some incomplete or misleading conclusions based a variety of category errors and assumptions. Traditional living room televisions are just one way of consuming video content. And "over-the-air broadcast" is just one way of distributing video content. Assuming broadcast television viewership shrinking also means less video is being created and consumed is like assuming music consumption is down because CD sales are down or the printed word is dying because fax machine sales are down. The reality is quite the opposite. Video content creation, distribution and consumption are all growing at very high rates and have been for a long time. The industry puts a lot of effort into reproducible, audited measurement and has developed deep understanding of how viewership has shifted and multiplied across video consumption platforms, consumption modes, and distribution channels - ranging from streaming long-form to social snacking. While it's true that broadcast television is shrinking and traditional living room TV sales are down, far more video content is being created, distributed and consumed today than ever before, and not by a little - the growth trends are explosive regardless of how we count: viewers, views, hours, titles, revenue or reach. All the metrics measured across the entire video content lifecycle reflect the same incredible growth. I suggest you focus on the myriad ways video content can be bad, is getting worse or has negative effects on kids, culture or human progress. But arguing video isn't growing is neither accurate nor necessary to support your point.