The Impact of National Anthem Protests on National Football League Television Ratings

Abstract

The National Football League’s (NFL) television ratings decreased by approximately 8% during the 2016 season, then a further 10% the following season. These declines coincided with league-wide national anthem protests initiated by Colin Kaepernick at the beginning of the 2016 season. Existing research identifies many determinants of demand for sporting events, but athletes’ protests are seldom considered. We use detailed data on players’ protests and television ratings to construct a new, game-level panel for the four NFL seasons between 2014 and 2017. Our results show protests are statistically significantly associated with lower TV ratings, but the economic magnitude is relatively muted.

Anthem Protests, Viewer Politics, and the Demand for NFL Games: Assessing the Impact of National Anthem Protests on Viewership

“…Brown and Sheridan (2020) improve upon Watanabe and Cunningham (2020) in some respects. They use game-level data across a four-year period (spanning the 2014 through 2017 regular NFL seasons) to assess the effects of anthem protests on NFL demand.…”

“…This analysis seeks to build upon Watanabe and Cunningham (2020) and Brown and Sheridan (2020) by developing more precise measures of political ideology tailored to the specific NFL markets and reconsideration of the outcome measure (i.e., TV game ratings). Further, we place greater weight on the effect of past protests on current viewership.…”

“…Two additional papers analyze NFL outcomes (Brown & Sheridan, 2020; Watanabe & Cunningham, 2020). Watanabe and Cunningham (2020) compile game-level data across a six-year period (spanning the 2012 through 2017 regular NFL seasons) to assess the effects of anthem protests, racial animus, explicit bias, and implicit bias on game attendance.…”

The Effects of Athlete Activism on League Credibility, Event Legacy, and Event Involvement: A Crisis Communication Perspective

“…For example, Brown and Sheridan (2020) analyzed NFL television ratings from 2014 to 2018 and found that they significantly declined during the 2016-17 season after the protest began and during the 2017-18 season after Donald Trump publicly criticized protesting NFL players. Some people also expressed anger and frustration toward the protest on social media using the hashtag #boycottNFL (Yoo et al, 2018).…”

Do political protests mobilize voters? Evidence from the Black Lives Matter protests

“… 2 A few studies have analyzed the BLM movement in other contexts, such as the demand for National Football League games (Brown & Sheridan, 2020 ) or lethal use of force by the police (Campbell, 2021 ). …”