Past Time for the Pastimes? NFL and MLB Lose Ground With Gen Z
Experts cited the popularity of EA Sports’ FIFA Soccer video game series as a key driver of interest in global soccer, a rising tide that may well be lifting the popularity of MLS.
“So being a fan, especially to that younger age group, is not nearly as tied to the live competition as it is for people in older demographics,” Billings said.
The transitory nature of social media and its effect on the collective U.S. attention span also better suit sports like basketball and soccer, with their easy-to-share highlight reels and the brilliance of individual stars. Social media has also elevated the profiles of those athletes, who are spending most of the game on the field of play and -- unlike football or baseball stars -- aren’t partially concealed by helmets or time in the dugout.
Coming into the 2018 season, the NFL has seen its TV ratings fall by about 17 percent since the 2015 season, according to Nielsen average TV viewership figures. Younger fans prioritizing other leagues could exacerbate the decline.
A 2017 Magna Global study conducted for SportsBusiness Journal underscored the advantage the NBA and MLS have with younger fans, citing Nielsen statistics. The median age of MLS and NBA viewers in 2016 was 40 and 42, respectively, compared with a median age of 50 for the NFL viewer and 57 for MLB.
The study also found that the median age of MLB and NFL viewers both went up by four years compared to 2006, versus 1- and 2-year increases for the median MLS and NBA viewers.
And then there’s the other elephant in the room regarding the league’s long-term viability: Emerging science on the effects of repeated concussions is already draining the NFL’s potential talent pool, with more parents refusing to let their children play the game.
“There certainly is a correlation between playing it and wanting to watch it or follow it at the college or pro level,” Billing said. “So they need to work toward doing everything they can to make parents feel comfortable letting their kids play organized football.”
That, coupled with the turn away from network TV viewing, suggests the NFL should be taking a harder look at its future.
“The NFL has been so dominant for so long” that the league doesn’t see the latest dip as anything more “than a bump in the road, but they need to change their model,” Durbin said. “If you stay on an irrelevant model for too long, you become irrelevant.”
Gen Z adults were only 6 points less likely to rate the NFL as their favorite sports league, keeping the league’s perch as the most popular sport among that group -- at least for now. The same can’t be said for baseball: At 15 percent, the youngest adults were a full 10 points less likely to say they favor MLB than adults as a whole, within the margin of error compared to the 12 percent of Gen Zers who said they preferred MLS.
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