REPORT: NFL Opening Weekend Saw a Decrease of Approximately 10 Minutes of Ads Per Game

by Rob Toledo

 We did in fact see a notable decrease during week one, anywhere between five and 15 minutes fewer commercials in most games

Touchdown – commercial – extra point – commercial – kickoff – commercial.

Last year, we ran the numbers and on average, each NFL game had around 55-65 minutes of commercials. This wasn’t an increase from previous years, but the perception was that there were far more ads, a problem for the NFL. We reported that the reasons for this perception are likely twofold:

Read more

Here are the top 5 things fans complained about during the 2016-17 season

by Rob Toledo

With the 2017-18 NFL season only a few weeks away, we wanted to look back at 2016-17 one more time and review some numbers on what was driving fans crazy last year.

We took a survey of 1,084 NFL fans, and mixed responses with social media trends by using tracking tools for sports-related commentary around the web, looking for trending complaints. It was pretty obvious there were two last year that drew most of the internet’s concern, but some others of course emerged as well.

Read more

REPORT: Those Who Play Fantasy Football Watch 4.5 More Hours of NFL Games a Week Than the Average Fan

by Rob Toledo

Fantasy football leads to 2x more regular viewing of NFL games

  • NFL fans who play fantasy football watch 4.5 more hours of football per week on average (8.7 total hours of watching NFL games a week)
  • 16% of NFL fans regularly play fantasy football
  • 78% of people who start playing fantasy football state that their NFL viewership increases

There are a lot NFL fans – TV ratings suggest that over 60% of Americans tune-in on occasion throughout the season to watch games, the largest percentage for any sport in the US. But then there are NFL fanatics, who watch pre-game coverage, flip between RedZone and their favorite team’s game, keeping one eye on their fantasy football app, and then immediately turning to social media to discuss and review highlights throughout the day.

Read more

REPORT: 66% of NFL Fans Support Homosexual Players Coming Out, an 11% Increase in Two Years

by Rob Toledo

NFL fan positive sentiment towards openly gay players increasing:

  • We polled 1,501 NFL fans and found that 65.8% now support openly gay players.
  • This is an 11% increase from our 2015 poll that found 54.5% of fans supported openly gay players
  • 72% of the US population thinks being homosexual is morally acceptable (source), a 7% increase over the same time frame (65% in 2015).
  • Our poll found that younger fans (18-34) are more supportive (80.8% support) than older fans (55+) (51% support). Read more

REPORT: 2017 NFL offseason Fan Optimism Scores

by Rob Toledo

With the NFL draft behind us we thought it would be an appropriate time to run a Fan Optimism Score™ survey to determine what teams’ fans are most excited about the upcoming season, and what fans are already on their proverbial fourth drink before the season has even seen its first kickoff.

Read more

REPORT: Comparing Guaranteed Contracts of the MLB, NBA and NFL

by Rob Toledo

A million here, a million there.

Professional sports contracts can seem massive, no matter the league, but we wanted to see what sport often ends up paying out the most in their top deals, especially relative to total league revenue. While the NFL has been a dominant force in US sports for the past decade for total league revenue, it was interesting to see how low their top 10 guaranteed contracts are compared to the NBA and MLB.

Read more

REPORT: Swing and a Miss – Average Strikeouts Per Game By Each MLB Team

by Rob Toledo

For some teams, it’s part of the strategy, take a lot of swings, don’t worry too much about striking out, the resulting hits will balance everything out. Others, they just don’t have the power to really take successful cracks at the ball.

We wanted to see what teams average the most strikeouts on offense per game, so we pulled data on the past five seasons (2012-2016) to determine who ended up walking back to the dugout empty-handed the most. Below you will find a breakdown of average strikeouts per team over the last five seasons, and a chart below that shows the five year average of every team as well.

Read more

REPORT: NFL Concussions Per Team Over the Past Five Seasons

by Rob Toledo

Among the several issues the NFL has faced in the press over the past few years, none have been as impactful as concussion data.

We wanted to see which NFL teams had the most concussions during games and which teams had the least. Using data from NFL injury reports as well as cross-referencing with third party NFL data providers, we broke down each team’s total reported in-game concussion count below.

Read more