NFL Ratings Fall at Faster Pace

Average audience for a game fell 9.7% to 14.9 million, but league says NFL programming still accounted for 33 of top 50 programs on TV in 2017

Story by Wall Street Journal
Written by Joe Flint

The decline in TV ratings for National Football League games accelerated in the recently completed 2017 regular season, though NFL games remain among the most-watched programming on television.

The average audience for a game was 14.9 million this season, down 9.7% compared with 16.5 million viewers for the 2016 regular season, according to Nielsen. That is a steeper decline than the 8% viewership erosion last year.