The costs of convergence

The end of season statistics are in for the NFL. Average viewership per game.

2015: 17.9 million
2016: 16.5 million
2017: 14.9 million

That is a 16.8{1a9740d54aaadd1290ec59721f654a3d9aaf924aeae0d9d35ee2fe84bc4370ea} viewership decline in two years.

The NFL appears well on the way to follow the course set by Marvel and NASCAR, which amounts to about a 50 percent decline in ten years. Given that there are 256 games in a season, that loss of three million viewers per game represents 768 million lost game-viewings.

Convergence is costly.