I canceled my NFL Sunday Ticket subscription tonight.
I actually started having second thoughts about it over the weekend, despite writing a week or so ago that I would do so if the NFL did not solve its labor issues by July 15.
They seem to be close to arriving at a deal. But they have seemed close to coming to a deal for two or three weeks now. Enough is enough.
Even as early as this morning, however, I thought DirecTV might get a reprieve. A friend emailed me information that DirecTV was offering its Sunday Ticket package for free for the season. That would seem to be a reasonable offer. But after a little reading and a couple of phone calls, I learned that, of course, DirecTV was only offering that deal to new subscribers.
Existing subscribers, I was told, are appreciated, but ineligible for the service. So DirecTV is competing with most cell phone companies and who the hell knows how many other businesses in treating new clients better than existing ones. Does nobody remember how much it costs to get a lost customer back?
So, anyway, for the 2011 season DirecTV is ineligible to keep my business, at least as far as Sunday Ticket goes. I can use that $300-and-change on other things.
Again, as I have written before, I am aware that my little protest alone is not going to have much of an impact on the business of the league or DirecTV. But I share in the hopes of AOL FanHouse Columnist David Steele, who writes at SportingNews.com that he hopes fans do not “give their love back to the NFL for free.”
I agree. Regardless of whether they return in time to play a full season or not, the owners and the players have cost us virtually the entire offseason. Let’s have some pride as fans and make them pay in the pocketbook enough so they can feel it.
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I wonder, as a percentage of game day audience, how many people feel they “lost” any NFL during the lockout?
Certainly there are a large number of fans who follow the off-season. But how do they compare as a portion of the total NFL audience? Anecdotally, the writers of this blog are the only people I know who pay any attention during the off-season. Everyone else watches the games, during the season, with little regard to the business of the NFL. Sure the may note a draft or trade, but it isn’t why they watch.
This leads me to posit that, assuming a deal is struck soon, there will be little impact to the NFL. The majority of fans simply care little for the off-season. The haven’t lost anything and don’t need to be won back.
I actually agree that (assuming a deal is done soon) there will be little impact to the popularity of the NFL. But that is only if they really do get it done without missing games (or at least, maybe only missing the HOF game).
However, I don’t think it’s as much because of a lack of people who follow in the offseason–I think the fact that the NFL draft is broadcast in primetime on ESPN, the fact that the NFL Network sees (I believe) some of their best ratings (and even if not their best, the fact that they can legitimately broadcast) the combine, and the excessive number of offseason magazines indicate how big the offseason is for the NFL.
I think that the NFL will see little to no impact on business more because of the strength of their position in the first place, combined with the idiocy of the other sport leagues. The NBA is also now locked out, and appears to be for the long haul. The NHL has been relegated to a niche sport for the most part, since their lockout a few years back (some would argue even before). And MLB is also facing some labor unrest, and continues to be too focused on just a few teams, and has been run by morons for far too long–having an All-Star game that determines home field advantage, playoffs that last into November, and apparently heading down the path of adding more playoff teams next year–when I know of no one that seems to want them–will drive interest in MLB even further south.
I do think the NFL should be glad they are apparently resolving this before the season, though–I think had it cost them regular season games, the impact potentially could have been even more dramatic than that of the MLB strike that cost the league the World Series.
I agree that “a lot of people” follow the off-season NFL, but it is only a fraction of the number of people who watch during the season.
The 2010 draft had 7.2 million viewers. The 2011 draft had 6 million. The combine did set an NFL Network record this year at 6.6 million, but that is over four days. The average was 400k at any one time. That would be about 2% of the audience for a single game (19 million on average, each).