I think the NFL has peaked. I base this on mainly three factors:
- ESPN/cable peaking. Cord cutting continues and it affects the highest cost channels the most and those are ESPN/ESPN2. Could the NFL switch away from broadcast and to a subscription model? Absolutely! But how will the NFL be more popular based on that?
- They announced recently that they will allow big end zone celebrations to "put the fun back in football". Because that's why people aren't watching?
- They are now allowing hard liquor ads during games. For some reason, they didn't allow them before. I can only assume that being associated with those products was not worth the value of the ads. And now it is. I view this as weakness in ad rates but it could be something else.
There was also something I think I heard about end zone celebrations being allowed (but I'm too lazy to look that up).
I have a pretty terrible record for predictions. Off the top of my head, predicting that 3D TV would be a bust is the only good one I can come up with. I could be suffering from cognitive dissonance since I stopped watching the NFL over 3 years ago (along with pretty much every other sport excepting curling, biathlon, skeleton and similarly popular sports).
Just to be clear, I'm not predicting an end to the NFL just that its popularity has peaked.
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