Though the NFL opened on Thursday night after a long hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic, the television ratings of the event marked a significant low. The Hollywood Reporter (THR) reported that the ratings were substantially lower than last year’s game opener.
“The Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs’ 34-20 victory over the Houston Texans averaged about 19.3 million viewers on NBC, according to preliminary ratings,” reported THR. “That’s down about 13 percent from the 22.12 million who watched last year’s kickoff, but ahead of the 19 million who tuned in for the 2018 kickoff.”
“The figures above do not include out of home viewing for the game, which will likely add some to the total,” writes THR. That data will be available next week. The season opener had at least one up side in that it was the “biggest single-network audience since the Oscars (23.64 million viewers) in February.”
THR noted: “Per NBC, streaming of Thursday’s game on NBC and NFL digital platforms and Verizon mobile properties averaged 970,000 viewers — the highest ever for an NFL game (excluding Super Bowls) on NBC. It was up 55 percent from the 627,000 average viewers for last year’s season opener and accounted for a little under 5 percent of the game’s total audience (excluding out of home viewing).”
The Daily Wire reported that the only comparable show on cable Thursday was “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News, drawing in 4.4 million viewers.
The outlet continued by noting that though it was inconclusive if the National Anthem protests contributed to the dip in Thursday’s ratings, NFL ratings have “slowly been in decline since 2018 when the protests took center-stage.” In speaking with CNBC last month, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stated that he did not believe the current spate of Black Lives Matter protests would in any way deter viewership.
“Our ratings have really been the envy of every entertainment and sports property. We have the broadest audience; we have the best partners in all of television and media. We feel that ratings always go up and down for a variety of reasons,” he said. “We’re supporting our players, we recognize the issues … going on in our communities. That’s a platform that we want to use to make change, and we’re going to do that. We’re going to stand behind our players.”
Before the game on Thursday night, the Houston Texans and the Kansas City Chiefs joined arm-in-arm for a “moment of unity,” prompting a torrent of boos from the few fans that were in attendance. Despite a number of initial reports, the moment did not take place during the national anthem. Both the “Star-Spangled Banner” and “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”—the latter being designated as the “black national anthem”—played in the lead-up to kickoff.
Though the Kansas City Chiefs appeared on the field for both songs, the Houston Texans stayed in the locker room for the songs’ duration. When the Texans did emerge, they joined the players mid-field and locked arms as a show of unity. At that moment, the crowd proceeded with the boos.
Texans coach Bill O’Brien believed that the crowd was not booing the moment of unity and was instead booing them as the visiting team.
“I thought that that was a nice thing to do, so I’m not sure why they would boo that,” O’Brien said. “Maybe they were just booing us because we had just come on the field as the visiting team. But yeah, I thought that that was a nice gesture.”