Ronn TorossianRonn Torossian
The National Football Leagueis a nonprofit entity. They’ve never really hidden this fact, but a lot of fans didn’t realize it. When they did, they revolted. Forget the kneeling scandal or all the perceived missteps NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has made as the top decision maker in the league. Learning that the NFL, which makes huge amounts of money, is getting a ton of breaks as a nonprofit infuriated millions of fans.

This is just one of the reasons the NFL has fallen out of favor with fans in recent years. Ratings are in the toilet.

It takes forever to watch a 60-minute football game. How long? At least three hours, and often more, thanks to all the talking and, more to the point, all the commercials. People just don’t want to sit through all those ads to see if their team will win or not, especially when they can get the highlights on their phone or see them on NFL Network or ESPN.

Last week Goodell finally admitted what fans have been saying for years. The games are too long, and it may be because of the commercials. What? Did he not realize people don’t want to see the same truck commercials ten times in a single quarter? This is news? Apparently so.

Ratings for NFL games have dropped more than ten percent this season. Some are blaming Colin Kaepernick’s anthem protest. For others, it's the fact that “parity” has given way to some pretty boring games. Some blame Goodell’s leadership, but there’s a simpler reason that, until now, seems to have escaped the bigwigs at the League. People just don’t want to sit there and watch the games that long anymore.

Our attention spans have shrunk, and they have options. Fans can record games on their DVRs and watch them later. So they go do Other Stuff, and then they realize they’d rather do that other stuff in the first place. When consumers have options even the most hallowed brands on the planet are no longer safe.

At a conference hosted by the New York Times, Goodell finally gave voice to something it’s likely has been whispered at the highest levels of the league for years now: “Should the games be shorter? ... We obviously want to take as much, what we call ‘dead time,’ non-action out of the game so that we can make the game more exciting [so] it’s all action… Can we do instant replay quicker than we’ve done it in the past? Should we look at ways to maybe take some commercialization out of the game? Either in less ads or maybe have the ads come in different ways than the traditional, what we call ‘pods’ which are two minutes and 20 seconds…”

Dispirited fans might be glad to hear all of that, but they’re practically cheering for that last bit. Fewer ads … or different ways to create revenue. Not only would that bring some fans back, but it would also prepare the league for the necessary transition to streaming that’s coming, whether they want it to happen or not.

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Ronn Torossian is CEO of 5WPR, one of the 20 largest PR firms in the United States.