The NFL continues to get sacked.
Monday Night Football’s Bucs-Panthers game saw ratings tumble 24 percent versus the same Week 5 game a year ago.
Over the first five weeks, ratings are down more than 10 percent.
While Fox, CBS, NBC and ESPN, which will pay roughly $40 billion through 2022 to air the games, are not yet panicking, the trend is raising some eyebrows.
Advertisers, hoping to get as many eyeballs as last season, are shelling out up to $700,000 per 30-second spot on some games.
It’s almost bad enough that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell would rather be asked about quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem.
Last week’s “Sunday Night Football” NBC telecast saw ratings fall 22 percent — but that game was up against the presidential debate.
Monday night had no debate and neither did the game last Thursday on CBS, which saw ratings decline 20 percent versus the same game last year.
To be sure, the NFL game was still the most popular show for the evening.
But the king of TV ratings is much less powerful this season.
The NFL recently sought to calm owners who may be antsy over the ratings decline — saying that in 1980, there was also ratings softness and that it was caused back then by a presidential election.
So are the eyeballs migrating to news programming?
BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield, in a report on Tuesday, said no.
Greenfield believes the TV universe is witnessing the erosion of the last great tentpole of TV — live sports. “Prime TV is getting crushed, now football, too. No linear TV is immune to fragmentation of ratings,” he said.
Greenfield also said the increase in news programming is not as great as the decline in NFL ratings — suggesting viewers are simply unplugging.
