Is it a passing storm or an existential problem? That’s a key question for the NFL as it grapples with the mushrooming controversy of players kneeling in protest during the national anthem, and President Donald Trump’s persistent bashing of the kneelers.
A new Yahoo Finance poll suggests the NFL has an enduring problem on its hands. Nearly 62% of 9,056 respondents told us they plan to watch less pro football in response to the anthem controversy. Thirty-six percent said they plan to buy less NFL merchandise, and 32% have chosen not to attend a game they would otherwise have gone to. Those findings all have financial implications for the NFL and its 32 team owners.
We wanted to limit our survey, conducted online via SurveyMonkey from Sept. 28-29, to people who patronize the NFL, and exclude people who have an opinion but don’t watch football. So we only counted answers from people who describe themselves as pro football fans. Eighty-eight percent of respondents said they watch at least one game per week, with 46% of those saying they watch more than two games.
(Here are the full survey results. The number of responses varies from question to question because some respondents skipped questions or were directed further down the survey based on answers they gave. A note about the results: In Question 9, 80% of respondents said they plan to watch less football on TV. But that’s only among people who answered yes to Question 8, asking if they have changed their behavior. When including the people who answered no to Question 8, the portion saying they plan to watch less football drops to 62%.)
The NFL’s anthem controversy is becoming one of the most divisive social issues in recent years, with Trump’s comments fanning the flames. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick kicked off the protests last year, when he began kneeling during the anthem to protest police brutality. A few other players followed his lead, but the kneelers were a sideshow and football was mostly about football.
[Read more: Here’s how NFL sponsors have responded to the player protests]
That changed on Sept. 22, when Trump gave a fiery speech in Alabama blasting the kneelers. He described Kaepernick, without mentioning him by name, as a “son of a bitch” and called on NFL owners to fire any player who kneels during the anthem. Trump has kept up his crusade since then, mostly on Twitter, provoking many players to kneel in solidarity with Kaepernick. Owners, meanwhile, have been struggling to keep fans happy without politicizing what, for most, is a form of entertainment.