what does a 7% dip in ratings translate to in terms of income?
If any FReeper knows.
That’s a drop from last year’s diminished ratings. Cumulatively, it’s much more than 7 percent.
There are three methods of measuring their financial in-flow of revenue: (1) ticket sales at the stadium (remembering that if you discount tickets just to fill up the stadium, you make minimum profit from those tickets), (2) NFL merchandising of fan paraphernalia, and (3) TV viewership.
On ticket sales...most tickets were sold back in spring, and unaffected by this season’s actions. I would take a guess that most popular teams have sold all tickets for 2017. The lesser teams probably hold 100,000 tickets to be sold for the remaining games. What happens in the play-off games will be curious. Then you come to spring of 2018 and potentially lagging sales where you offer ticket packages of maybe four tickets for the price of three, to get seats sold. In this case, they are losing money.
On the merchandise...it was stupid upper-middle-class guys paying $75 for special jerseys, and $700 for leather Falcon jackets. I think 50-percent of the income off this area is very likely.
As for viewership? Your big sign will be the network charge for Super Bowl advertising. If it drops by five to ten percent...it’s a pretty big negative.
All of this will lead the networks in negotiation for the next big contract to review things and probably drop their offer for the contract by twenty-percent. The NFL will shop around and try to find a better deal.
I’d also suggest the NCAA draft picks probably won’t see the same offerings as in the past two or three years. My humble guess is that they will be five to ten percent cuts on offers.