I would say that the damage has been done; I can hardly wait for the next broadcast negotiation. Business does NOT like surprises. Who knows what the NFL’s reaction to the next stupid stunt will be.
The damage has been done over several years; this just made the problem hard to downplay/ignore. The NFL had become a touch football league in which tons of commercials separated what amounted to about 13 minutes of play over 3.5 hours, and in this day and age that just doesn’t play well. Anyone I’ve known who held season tickets (including Giants, Jets, and Eagles) had gotten rid of them before this national anthem business started, and anyone I know who still follows the game only does so for fantasy pools; watching games has become irrelevant.
The anthem protests just highlighted how far apart the NFL had grown from its fan base; over the past couple of years they gambled on replacing them with some of the last growth area for TV audiences - blacks, women, etc..