Chuck Klosterman on why we've never actually seen a real football game

AFAIC, NFL football is almost always the top 99 out of 100 most viewed television programs in the US every year. The Oscars usually manage to claw onto the list and in election years a couple presidential debates make it, displacing a few regular season games. Since your claim conflicts with my current understanding, I just had AI do a quick search of recent credible sources. Here's the summary:

> "The claim that football (American football/NFL) as a televised spectator sport is trending down is not true based on recent data.

>Regular season NFL viewership saw a minor dip of about 2.2% in 2024 (averaging 17.5 million per game), but rebounded strongly in 2025 with significant gains—averaging around 18.7 million viewers per game (up 10% from the prior season in some reports, marking the highest in 36 years or second-highest on record when including updated measurement methods like Nielsen's Big Data + out-of-home viewing). Networks like CBS, Fox, NBC, and Amazon all reported year-over-year increases, with streaming platforms showing particularly strong growth.

> Super Bowl audiences continue setting records: Super Bowl LIX (2025) averaged 127.7 million viewers (up 3% from the previous year), marking consecutive record highs. Playoff games, including wild-card and divisional rounds, also showed double-digit increases in multiple cases. While some earlier seasons had slight declines (often tied to factors like election years or measurement changes), the overall trend since 2024-2025 has been upward, reinforcing the NFL's position as the dominant U.S. televised sport."

Your impression may arise from shifting measurement platform data due to increasing out-of-home, mobile, streaming, DVR, etc viewership. Just comparing traditional old-school Nielsen in-home diary data alone hasn't been accurate for over a decade. Even if we discount recent cross-platform measurement data, the overwhelming dominance of NFL football is also well supported by the audited financial reports of what broadcasters and streamers pay the NFL and further by what advertisers pay for slots. The sheer money being paid dwarfs all other sports and types of television programming (news, drama, comedy, etc). The recent dramatic growth of legalized sports gambling in the US will likely push NFL viewership across all platforms and formats even higher.

Yes, but NFL viewership is growing.

> all TV broadcast is growing like 1/10th the rate as Netflix did in the past decade.

Okay, but that undermines your earlier point. The NFL isn't tied to or limited by 'broadcast television'. NFL football is simply 'video content', but not just any video content, it's the hottest video content of all time - no matter how its distributed. Streaming is now the fastest growing distribution channel for video content, so it's also the fastest growing channel for live football video content. Netflix is paying big bucks to stream some live NFL games - with plans to increase next year. And Amazon Prime is already a major 'network' for NFL with Thursday Night Football. Industry analysts report NFL football is by far the single most expensive content/hr for Netflix and Prime and is a major loss leader for both. They're paying the NFL far more than the broadcast rights are worth as a way to 'buy' more of the subscriber growth you find so impressive. Netflix (and Amazon Prime) aren't 'beating' NFL football, they've surrendered and are joining them (at a loss).

Disney Plus tried to bid on NFL streaming rights but NFL is so expensive it's a hugely risky way for streamers to buy viewers, so Disney dropped out and recently did a deal for exclusive US live streaming rights for a much smaller sport than NFL - F1 racing. Bottom line: live sports is the biggest, most consistent driver of video content viewership - and always has been. NFL is by far the biggest video content sport - and always has been. It's been true for over 50 years, from traditional over-the-air broadcast, cable television (in the 80s NFL rights made ESPN the most valuable cable channel), satellite (in the 90s out-of-market NFL games were the largest driver of DirectTV & Dish growth) and now it's a key growth vector for streamers.

Streaming isn't a threat to the NFL, it's the NFL's biggest growth channel. In fact, the real limit on the NFL's future growth isn't distribution at all. It's already so dominant in the U.S, it has no competition close enough to be relevant. The NFL's only remaining limit is, quite literally, the size of the U.S. population. That's why the NFL's been investing huge sums trying to establish NFL football elsewhere in the world. It's their single biggest growth priority - because they're already the absolute, undisputed king of broadcast, cable, satellite and streaming in the U.S.