As the new season begins, is the NFL starting to fall off?

I don’t mean on the field,  but off of it.  Some recent developments have the league that every major media outlet thinks can do no wrong looking more and more like just another organization that is making bad decisions.  And these blunders, some already committed and others on the horizon, don’t spell doom for the league, they could result in a diminished reputation among fans and the media (OK, not the media; they have too much invested in the NFL’s success to come out swinging against it).  And that would be really bad for business.

You see, the NFL has enjoyed teflon image for the past ten to fifteen years.  Nothing it or it’s players have done has gotten any real bad press, no matter how heinous.  Steroids?  No harm.  NFL players get busted for using them all the time but no one has tarred them with the scarlet letter that baseball received.  Crime?  The NFL has had more players, both in total and as a percentage of it’s overall population, involved in more criminal acts (not to mention more severe ones) than any other league yet the NBA is the ‘thug league’ in the minds of many sports fans.  And while that won’t change anytime soon, the NFL could be in for a self inflicted image hit for it’s business practices that would make a lot less lovable among it’s many millions of fans.  What are they?

Overpriced Tickets

Now this isn’t anything new, but the current economic conditions have exacerbated the problem.  It used to be that you had overpriced tickets, but there were still enough people to fill up a stadium at the price.  Now, it looks like there are a lot of cities where people who once could have afforded to go can no longer.  Near 10% unemployment nationwide will do that.  And when you throw PSL prices on top of the regular ticket price for season tickets, you’re really getting gouged.  But there’s another problem related to the high ticket prices: the rise of the big screen television.  Nowadays, a lot of us either have our own monster television or at least know somebody who does, or know a bar that has one.  The experience is cheaper and less time consuming than going to the stadium, and the visual is every bit as good.  The only reason to fork over the huge dollars for tickets is if the stadium experience is somehow better than the television one.  Which bring us to the next issue.

The stadium experience

Right now it’s on the decline.  For those who haven’t gone recently, allow me to spell out the stadium experience at FedEx field for a regular, single game ticket buying fan like me.  You get to the stadium in time to get to your seat for kickoff, you pay horrendous prices for food and drink ($10 and up for a chicken finger/fries/soda combo that would cost half as much as Mickey D’s), you get to sit within earshot of countless drunken idiots screaming profanities and looking for a fight (which makes you immediately not want to bring the kids), ear shattering sound effects from the sound system, a view of the field where the players look like toy soldiers (unless you want to pay some scalper several hundred dollars for marked up lower bowl seats), and a trip home that consists of an hour-plus just to get out of the parking lot that they charged you $25 to park in.  Good times, huh?  Going to night game often means missing work the next day because of the time involved to get in and get out.  Now how of you want to fork over thousands of dollars for season tickets when you can get a high def tv and watch it at home for a lot less?  This is unique to the NFL because NBA and hockey arenas tend to be downtown with mass transit running to and fro, and baseball tickets are still relatively cheaper.  Right now, any cost benefit analysis of going to an NFL game for the average fan would say stay home and watch on tv.

The blackout rules

The next one fits in with the first two.  Blackouts could be a real problem in several cities, and the league is blowing a chance to get rid of a badly outdated rule.    If I’m a home fan of the Jaguars, I’d be pissed if I had to wait until after midnight to watch my team play a game that took place at 1:00 in the afternoon.  But that’s how the NFL is handling it, and Roger Goodell seems to like it that way.  When he was on ESPN radio last week, he went on and on about how they wanted to figure out how to get people to want to pay for tickets in the endangered cities instead of letting watch on free tv (and he said free like it was some kind of bad word; more on that later).  So in bad economic times, when people who could have bought tickets a year ago can no longer afford them, you choose to take away the only way they can watch the game.  That’s real customer service there, Roger.  Which brings us to….

Pay per view

It’s not here yet (ok, Sunday Ticket is) but they sure as heck want it to be.  The NFL Network and Sunday Ticket  are just the first steps; the ultimate goal is to get us to pay for as much NFL as they can get away with making us pay for.  They tried to charge the cable companies more for carrying NFL Network, which they’re using to show some of the same types of programs that ESPN shows (som games, the draft, highlight shows).  Trust me, the goal is to one day kick ESPN to the curb and make you come to them for the draft, highlight reels, replays of classic games, you name it.  And the final piece to the puzzle will be getting us to pay for the privelege of watching regular season games and playoffs.  Which I think would be a huge mistake.  What’s helped them get so big was that you could watch all the important stuff on free tv (or cable that you already paid for); in another ten years you may be stuck with a few games on Sunday and that’s it.  And that will ultimately hurt their bottom line, because unless we all become millionaires, we just aren’t going to have the money to pay for all of that.

Work stoppage?

It’s in danger of happening; right now the owners want to share less of the revenue with the players, and the players want to get in on some of the money that the owners are making from new sources.  The owners also want 18 regular season games, which the players will want more money for.  And then there’s the rookie pay scale the owners want to implement as well.  Those are just a few issues at stake, and the possibility of things not getting resolved is real.   Hey commissioner, go ask David Stern, Gary Bettman, and Bud Selig how that worked out for them.  Contrary to what you might think, it will hurt.

OK, so that’s it.  A few things to think about.  Now all these things may transpire and people may still drink the NFL Kool Aid, but I’m guessing that there is only so much alienation we can take before we opt and find something less expensive to do.  What do you guys think?