Just FYI, even if people boycotted the game by turning off their TVs, several acquaintances of mine reported turning their TVs on during gametime to watch something else, only to discover that the cable/dish company had changed the channel on their box to the game. They normally do not watch the channel the game was being broadcast on, so they know they would never have selected that channel themselves. It’s quite likely that even the lower numbers of this year’s game are inflated by the cable providers taking over subscribers’ cable boxes.
“several acquaintances of mine reported turning their TVs on during gametime to watch something else, only to discover that the cable/dish company had changed the channel on their box to the game.”
Never heard of that before.