In
my last blog posting (August 18), I urged the reader to ‘change the channel’ to
‘off’ with televised games of the National Football League (NFL) … due to players
refusing to stand for the playing of the National Anthem … as a means of
protesting the NFL. Within that blog, I quoted
a retired veteran’s poignant letter to the NFL Commissioner.
New
data released by Foursquare indicates
sports bars lost business in 2016 from some of their most important customers –
NFL fans.
According
to Steven Rosenblatt, president of the location tracking company:
Across cities with and without NFL teams, Sunday
sports bar foot traffic dropped by double digits between the 2015 and 2016
season with a 12% year-over-year drop for cities with teams and a 13% year-over-year
drop for those without.
The
drop in foot traffic corresponds with an 8% drop in television viewership for
the NFL’s 2016 regular season. Many fans
cited national anthem protests by San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick
and other players as a major reason for not watching games on television. The NFL also took a controversial position
against a bill to protect religious liberty in Georgia earlier in the year.
Foursquare also reports sports bars in NFL
teams’ regions typically see a 32% increase in business on Sundays during the
season compared to Sundays without football the rest of the year.
In
addition to the well-documented problems at ESPN, it appears the politicization
of football is having a very real effect on the sports entertainment industry
extending beyond just television ratings.
Rev.
Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor,
Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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