Many clichés have been used to describe the NFL’s decline in viewership. Whether the NFL is being sacked, ratings are being fumbled, viewers are being intercepted, etc., the fact remains—the NFL ratings are taking a hit. I would like to suggest, however, the NFL ratings are not taking a hit to the head because the 17 percent drop on Monday nights and the 10 percent fewer viewers overall is certainly causing a headache but are definitely unforgettable (yes, that was a concussion joke).

Many outlets and blogs have offered a myriad of opinions on the cause of this crisis. I will briefly discuss a couple of these causes then introduce and explain what I consider to be an underappreciated but salient problem for the NFL and viewership:

The Kaepernick Effect (And Political Season): Some suggest that the decline in viewership and the emergence of National Anthem protests have a causal relationship. To these individuals it isn’t merely coincidence that the presence of the National Anthem protests and the decline in viewership happened at the same time. Mike Ozanian at Forbes has a series of articles positing that the National Anthem protests remains the single largest driving force behind the decline. Citing a Sporting News article, Ozanian suggests 32 percent of adults say they’re less likely to watch NFL game telecasts because of the player protests. I would find it difficult to believe, however, that a handful of players’ behavior would drive diehard football fans away from watching their favorite teams. Oh, and presidential debates and the overall entertainment of the Trump vs. Clinton election.

The On-field Product: Penalties, No Fun League, and Are These Guys Any Good?:  Many people suggest that the decline in viewership is due to the lack of fluidity in today’s game due to the growing number of penalties which contributes to an overall decline in the on-field product.  The issue of excessive penalties is multifaceted so let’s tackle a couple of the contributing factors. The first factor to consider is the use of penalties as punishment for deviant unsportsmanlike behavior. The propagation of penalties as a corrective intervention to keep players from dancing, showboating, and um having fun is creating a culture that takes the personality out of the game (read: certain personalities). The anticipation of watching TO and Chad Ochocinco’s (but really Johnson because by Ochocinco he wasn’t scoring many TD’s) celebrations brought a lot of interest to the sport. Watching Cam Newton do his Superman Celebration or Dab on them folks’ brought thousands of people to the stadiums and millions of viewers at home. Now that the No Fun League is legislating these behaviors out of the game—we are essentially watching a board game (yes, that was a play on board and bored… you’re welcome).

So that’s one part—The No Fun League. The next part is that penalties disrupt the flow of the game and often have a large influence on a drive. When a controversial call/noncall changes the fortunes of a drive/game, viewers are rightfully upset. With the increase in technology and the introduction of replay, viewers are unsatisfied with “human error” in ways that were previously nonexistent. In this way, viewers see miscalls as incompetence, eroding the legitimacy of the game.

Finally, who are these GM’s and coaches that put together these terrible teams? The mission of the NFL is that any given Sunday a team can win or lose. This is predicated on the idea of competitive parity which is structurally introduced by draft orders, salary caps, etc. However, as resource based view (and knowledge base view) of the firm suggest, heterogeneity between firms exist even given the same or similar tangible resources due to the bundling of those tangible resources with the intangible resources (e.g., knowledge of the coaching staff, talent scouts, etc.) creating capabilities and competencies possessed by the specific firm/team.  As such, certain teams with certain coaching staffs seem to enjoy abnormal performance over time as other teams are perennial bottom feeders in the league. Teams, searching for a quick fix, often disrupt their own ability to develop these socially complex and path-dependent capabilities and core competencies by firing coaches early or making frequent personnel changes. The result is that any given Sunday in many ways describes the low probability of actually seeing a good game.

So What’s the Real Reason?: This should go without saying but I shall say this anyways—I am by no means suggesting the reasons stated previously are not contributing to the decline in viewership. I do think, however, that many pundits and observers are missing what I consider to be potentially the biggest reason: Fantasy Football.

But Bob, Fantasy Football is why football viewership increased! How can it be the reason it is decreasing? That’s a fair point. Many people have suggested that the rise in Fantasy Football and the new daily fantasy football apps increased the interest in football and, therefore, increased the viewership. This might have been true at first but hear me out. To understand how these two things can be true, let me first describe what we call “core rigidities”.

For simplicity I will borrow businessdictionary.com’s definition of core rigidity, “Flip side of core competencies, and caused by overreliance on any advantage(s) for too long. While a successful firm’s management relaxes its improvement efforts, others keep on getting better and obsolete its competitive advantage.” In other words, firms identify what gives them their competitive advantage, focus and invest in those core competencies, and sometimes becomes too reliant on the past to see the need to develop new capabilities to compete in the future. The firm stifles innovation due to the focus on the current competencies and then falls victim to inertial forces within the firm. Ok, so what does this have to do with Fantasy Football?

Well, instead of focusing on the product, the NFL has invested and partnered with ESPN, Yahoo, DraftKings, and others to promote the use of Fantasy Football. As such, the NFL became comfortable with the assumption that as long as we give the people fantasy football podcasts, updates, apps, etc. they will be willing to watch whatever product as long as it is the NFL. This is evident by the introduction of Thursday Night Football which has almost no benefits other than it being another night for advertisement. The on-field production naturally suffered due to the quick turnaround and lack of mental and physical preparation for the teams. Moreover, because schedules are made before the season, many of the Thursday night matchups are simply not appealing. But, because we have fantasy football we will tune in to see how many points Tom Brady is going to get me, right?

Well, kind of. That was the bet. That is why the NFL, ESPN, and others have invested so heavily in creating the best fantasy football product irrespective of the actual on-field product. What the NFL and others didn’t bet on was the willingness of individuals to live life without cable or satellite. The demographics of the cable cutters and the fantasy football enthusiasts are often overlapping as both require some level of technological sophistication (assuming individuals are opting for Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services instead of cable). It is this often younger demographic that represents the shift in the external environment that makes the NFL’s reliance on fantasy football as a driver of viewership a core rigidity rather than a core competency. How? Because we have figured out that we do not need to WATCH Julio Jones’ 300 yard receiving performance to know that he will be the reason I win my Fantasy Football game. Instead, I can follow the progress of the games through apps and websites. In fact, this is in many ways optimal because I can keep up with my entire fantasy football team and the Kardashians at the same time—watching relevant highlights on NFL.com.

And after all, isn’t that what society is about in 2016? The popularity of Vine, Twitter, and Snapchat signal a shift toward short frequent consumption of media rather than long duration (Oh, hey 3 hours + football game!). Fantasy football and the complementary apps, websites, shows, etc. have now convinced a rather large segment of consumers that the NFL action/time ratio is on par with soccer (or um real football depending on who you ask). Indeed, many of us used to argue that in 90 minutes of soccer there were 10 minutes of action. Now we are realizing that 3 hours of football can be cut down to 5 minutes of highlights which are the 5 minutes that I need to see my fantasy football players score or make big plays. Thus, the introduction of fantasy football once increased our interest in football leading many to watch games they would otherwise not watch to see their fantasy football players. However, with the massive infrastructure surrounding fantasy football, we no longer need to watch play-by-play because we can get updates and watch the highlights we need to watch. In this way, watching an NFL game to watch your fantasy football player was NEVER about being committed to watching bad games. It was just a means to an end. And now people are utilizing other means that do not involve the time investment of watching the Dolphins play the Browns to see all 5 passes to Jarvis Landry. We now have a whole segment of consumers that used to enjoy watching the game of football but now enjoy following the game of Fantasy Football and it turns out that those are not as inextricably linked as the NFL and their partners thought.

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