Will the NFL suffer a post-Tom Brady ratings dip? Here's what experts say
When Michael Jordan retired at the height of his popularity, the NBA soon learned a hard truth. It had no heir to Air Jordan, no emerging superstar prepared to step into Jordan’s high tops and drive revenue and viewership.
In 1998, a record TV audience tuned in to watch Jordan’s “Last Dance” Chicago Bulls capture their sixth and final NBA title. In 1999, the NBA no longer had Jordan to sell and ratings for the Finals plummeted to an 18-year low.
The NBA’s post-Jordan ratings decline raises an intriguing question: Should the NFL brace for a similar dip in viewership now that its GOAT is also retiring? Or is the NFL now so ingrained in American viewing habits that even the loss of Tom Brady won’t dent TV ratings?
The answer, former TV executives told Yahoo Sports, is that the NFL won’t feel Brady’s absence anywhere near as much as the NBA did Jordan’s. The loss of a well-known quarterback can sink a particular team’s marketability or viewership, but no single player’s retirement — not even Brady’s — can produce a leaguewide ratings downturn.
“I don’t think there’s anything that tells us that the loss of a major star impacts the viewing of the league as a whole,” said Patrick Crakes, an ex-Fox Sports executive turned media consultant.
While Brady won seven Super Bowls, launched his own health and wellness brand, and married a Brazilian supermodel, not even he has had anywhere near the cultural impact that Jordan did. There are no “Like Tom” commercial jingles. He doesn’t have his own signature brand of shoes, nor has he teamed with a cast of animated characters in a blockbuster movie.
The NFL also traditionally isn’t as star-reliant as the NBA. By the very nature of the sport, the league’s team-centric marketing efforts, and the impact of gambling and fantasy football, the NFL can more easily withstand the retirement of Brady than the NBA could, say, LeBron James.
“There’s a very different dynamic between football and basketball,” Crakes said. “The NFL is much more about all the different parts put together than it is one great player. The NBA is a star-driven league, and Jordan was that sport’s biggest star ever.”
In his two seasons in Tampa Bay, Brady certainly elevated his new team’s stature. A Bucs team that was only occasionally on national TV during the Jameis Winston era immediately became a staple of "Sunday Night Football" or "Monday Night Football."
Eleven of Tampa Bay’s 17 regular season games this season aired in at least half of television markets, according to Sports Media Watch. That number is likely to plummet next season unless the Bucs were to replace Brady with Aaron Rodgers or another prominent quarterback.
“To me, it takes Tampa off the board,” said Jay Rosenstein, a former vice president of programming at CBS Sports. “Brady was the reason people were following Tampa. They don’t have the magnetic attraction they had before.”
The good news for the NFL is that there are plenty of talented young quarterbacks who appear capable of collectively filling the viewership void created by Brady’s retirement. Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Justin Herbert, Kyler Murray and Joe Burrow are each ascending and each 26 years old or younger.
“There are so many other quarterbacks jumping off the page right now that you don’t necessarily lose anything by losing Brady,” Rosenstein said.
Of course, the last time the NFL lost a quarterback of Brady’s stature, the league did endure a subsequent decline in viewership. TV ratings declined sharply in 2016 after Peyton Manning’s retirement, but Crakes and Rosenstein are skeptical that Manning’s decision to step away from football was the primary factor.
The 2016 season coincided with the explosive presidential race between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton. Crakes contends that news coverage of the campaign and its aftermath siphoned away many more casual viewers from the NFL than Manning’s absence did.
“In 2016, the real problem was the increase in news viewing,” Crakes said. “Peyton had an impact. You don’t want to lose him. But far more important was the news of the election.”
Will Brady’s retirement have an impact? Is a casual fan as likely to be drawn in by Mahomes or Allen or Burrow? Judging from the ratings of the first two games of the post-Brady era, the NFL should be just fine.
Last Sunday’s AFC overtime classic between Burrow’s Bengals and Mahomes’ Chiefs was the NFL’s most-watched conference championship game in six years in the afternoon window. And the nightcap between the Rams and 49ers produced an eight-year viewership high for the NFC title game.
On the field of play, Brady might be Jordan’s equal. From a viewership standpoint, he is not.
