NFL Scoring and Ratings
Research Question
We will be looking at the national football leagues scoring data for the past eight years and the rating for the league as well. There are claims that the leagues ratings for this year have gone up due to the scoring increase in the league and that the past downs in ratings were due to the scoring decreasing. The goal in this is to provide a light on the NFL and how the game itself has affected the viewership of the sport. Forbes Magazine, (https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2018/11/26/nfl-scoring-is-up-and-so-are-ratings/#7d1136ac76cd), has its own headliner as the “NFL Scoring Is Up, And So Are Ratings”, showing the picture that just scoring more can cause the increase in rating. Although, other changes in the NFL economy seem to be more at fault for the shifts.
Analysis
Through the analysis, 2018 shows the average points in the games for the whole season to be 23.3 points with the viewership being 103.4 million. This shows a drop of 8 million in viewers from 2017 even with an increase of 1.6 average points in the season. But this isn’t a sudden drop in viewership, after the 2015 season the league went down 2.5 million in 2016 and would continue to drop from there. There had been several things that led to that, from teams moving cities to protest from the players on the side line. But all in all, the NFL has seen an increase in the average points scored in the past 5 years, with only one year in the past 29 being higher than this one. Even with the many new rules and regulations to attempt to prevent injuries and deaths in players, with all that the NFL still host the biggest event in the United States, the Super Bowl. The league may be seeing a low decline in viewership for the event, but it will take a lot before the league is in serious trouble with its viewers; as there are many other areas that have skewed the numbers as Forbes did point out in their article.
Findings
From the findings, recommend that readers continue to pay attention to the ever-growing market of American Football but keep in mind that many are starting to the sport as more dangerous than it’s worth. If the NFL wants to keep up with the market, then it will require the league to adapt with society. In the research, we pulled the NFL scoring from 2018-1990 but only use 2018-2010 in the research, then pivot the table to show just the years and the average point scored. We found this data from the “PRO FOOTBALL REFERENCE.” The cite pulls each year’s statistics for each year and each team, which shows in more detailed of how the teams have resulted in the increase in scoring. While the viewership rating came from the Superbowl viewership on Statista.
