The NFL’s Stranglehold On Television Is Worse Than You Ever Could Have Imagined

It’s the NFL‘s world.

The rest of the major sports in America are just living in it.

Don’t believe us?

Take a look at the top-100 most-watched television programs in the United States in 2023. Of those 100 programs, the NFL accounted for a jaw-dropping NINETY-THREE!

Oh, and that’s without including the Super Bowl lead-out show that accounting for one of the others. Of the six other programs to make the list, one was the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, one was the Academy Awards, one of political programming and the other three were college football games.

Each of the top 20 most-watched programs were NFL games, and 48 of the top 50. That is astonishing.

What’s even more crazy is that the number is on the rise according to Sportico.

“…2023 was the year the NFL swallowed our collective frame of reference. Per Nielsen, the league accounted for 93 of the year’s 100 most-watched TV broadcasts, an improvement on 2022’s already impressive tally (82) and a huge leap forward compared to the 61 slots the NFL commandeered just five years ago,” writes Anthony Crupi. “If it’s widely accepted that TV is now merely a delivery system for live sports and insurance commercials, last year’s deliveries suggest that the rest of the so-called Big Four leagues have been remanded to a shadow tier. ”

Not only is the NFL dominating programming, it’s kicking other leagues out of the way to do so as well. Take, for example, the massive Christmas Day ratings drop for the NBA.

The league had previously dominated Christmas Day. But when the NFL opted to up its programming on the holiday, it blew the NBA out of the water entirely.

The top-ranked NBA game didn’t even sniff the list, coming in at No. 120 overall for Game 5 of the NBA Finals between the Miami Heat and the Denver Nuggets.

The NFL rules the US television world. That’s just the way it is. So we’d all better get used it.