National Anthem Protests Are Hitting the NFL Where it Hurts
After Trump comments, vows to expand the protests.
The left wing antics of Colin Kaepernick and other players, taking a knee during the National Anthem, is having a devastating effect on the NFL’s bottom line.
We recently pointed out a similar trend at ESPN: ESPN Determined to Kill its Brand With Left Wing Politics
For the NFL it’s worse because you can actually see the empty seats left by the fans who have walked away.
Tyler Lauletta writes at Business Insider:
The NFL is getting hammered after another game was played in a half-empty stadium
“Thursday Night Football” gave football fans something of a surprise as the San Francisco 49ers hosted the Los Angeles Rams at Levi’s Stadium in a barn-burner of a football game, ending with an enthralling fourth quarter by the Niners before falling just short of completing the comeback.
The Rams’ 41-39 victory was a shootout — and some of the most exciting “Thursday Night Football” fans had seen in recent memory, featuring a successful onside-kick attempt, late turnovers, and a backdoor cover that sent gamblers home either elated or furious…
But the game also served as a reminder of one of the NFL’s recent woes: poor attendance.
Shots of the stadium, like the one above, made clear that attendance was dismal for the primetime game. Despite claims that attendance was over 70,000, anyone with eyes could see that the stadium was largely empty, with even some of the best seats in the lower bowl left untaken.
As SFGate noted, tickets were available on secondary markets for just $14 — about the price of a beer and hot dog inside the stadium. And still, few people found the time to support the Niners in person.
25 mins to game time, sellout looks imminent @NorthBayNews #ThursdayNightFootball #levisstadium pic.twitter.com/oXq9P0x1RQ
— Kent Porter (@kentphotos) September 22, 2017
At Levi’s Stadium for @49ers vs Rams game I found cobwebs in my row. #cheapseats #signofthetimes #GoNiners #49erFaithful pic.twitter.com/NCnOtdUZ1k
— Michael Peredo (@MichaelPeredo) September 21, 2017
From my vantage point 3 minutes to go 2ND quarter. #49ers vs #Rams pic.twitter.com/pYbJPFNV6q
— Colin Resch (@colinresch) September 22, 2017
The attendance for the USC game was more than the Chargers and Rams’ attendances combined. pic.twitter.com/Pt96Vec5n4
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) September 18, 2017
Even Trump is getting in on the act. Last night at a rally in Alabama, he revved up the crowd by bringing up the protests and suggesting a way to deal with it.
From the FOX News Insider:
‘Tell That Son of a B***h He’s Fired’: Trump Blasts NFL Anthem Kneelers
President Trump railed against National Football League players who have knelt during the national anthem.
Trump said that he and Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), who he was stumping for in Huntsville, are “unified” by “great American values.”
“We’re proud of our country and we’re proud of our flag,” he said.
He said players who disrespect the flag and kneel for the national anthem should be ejected from the stadium and cut from the team.
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say ‘get that son of a b***h off the field right now – he’s fired’,” Trump said.
Here’s the video:
It’s only going to get worse for the NFL and for ESPN, as supporters of the protests are promising to expand the efforts:
Just so we're clear: the president's comments will only incite more player protests, not quell them.
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) September 23, 2017
It’s like they are walking into a trap.
The players and supporters apparently don't realize they are helping Trump with all this. Keep it up, Trump can't get reelected without you. https://t.co/5erwCBDC6A
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) September 23, 2017
Featured image via YouTube.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Why engage in economic stifling oublicity stunts in the USA when you could:
Resign pro football
Become a mercenary
Actually fight a real war to end slavery in the places of the world where it still exists
Trolling Jemele Hill on Twitter is sort of liking claiming the free space on a bingo card. But someone has to do it. Nicely done.
Trump makes a statement.
Roger Goodell condemns it. The NFLPA slams it (both statements from Drudge this am).
The average Trump voter/supporter nods his head in agreement. With Trump. The average neutral voter who is fed up with all the PC nonsense outside of politics also finds himself/herself agreeing with Trump.
Trump smiles.
Sorry, Jemele honey, but if the NFL owners can’t fill the seats and tv contracts get cancelled, they’ll file for bankruptcy and those multi-million dollar contracts will be worthless. Lots of folks depend on the revenues from the NFL, but the NFL needs an AUDIENCE. Pi$$ off ordinary, patriotic Americans and we will walk away- as we’re doing right now. No one looks at men like Kapernick and sees a victim. I agree with rduke007!
Touche!
I just don’t get the protests. I know it’s an offshoot of BLM and a claim that America is inherently racist, but seeing Black millionaires protesting in the NFL where 70% of all players are Black, just seems comical and entirely agenda driven. It lacks the oppression to give the protest legitimacy.
these players have only 1 skill and it ain’t dee[ thinking.
i suspect that most people who enjoy seeing sports are NOT the LibRules. The best thing that can happen to MAGA is to boycott these ‘games’ and if you do attend, walkout and demand your money back – you expected a game not a political statement.
btw – the claim for high attendance, is due to season ticket holders, who are NOT showing up for the game.
Remember the “LibRules” were attempting to shut down football –
before they got overwhelmed dealing with a Real American as President!
Colin Kaepernick’s protests began not long after he took up with a new girlfriend, Nessa Diab, who is a radical black nationalist and professional pot-stirrer who used him for her own ends.
In all seriousness, this all started because Colin K wanted to impress his girlfriend, and was too stupid to understand the consequences.
I stopped watching NFL football last year actually altogether. I do not watch ESPN anymore either. There are so many other wonderful things to do with your time and enjoying life away from the cable tv is liberating.
High school and college football is where it’s at.
I’m spending my free time catching up with a childhood dream: learning piano.
It appears the NFL never learned the rule of holes.
Keep it up fools you still have a long way to drop. Over a cretin like Kaepernick, aka the shoe king, who isn’t even good enough to play in the NFL anymore. Leaves him lots of time to stroke his room full of shoes.
Goddell said this morning that Trump’s comments are “divisive.” Did he ever criticize Kaepernick’s taking a knee. He is so foolish and p.c. that he’s going to kill off the NFL. What a shame.
Goodell allowing Kapernick to wear socks depicting police as pigs might be a little “divisive”?
Especially since he followed that up by refusing to allow the Cowboys to wear anything to honor the 6 Dallas policemen who were murdered.
All this righteousness from a league that throws the penalty flag on displays of joy upon scoring a touchdown.
I’ve been boycotting the nfl for over 30 years, but then again my hometown team is the detroit leons.
A more pathetic example of futility is hard to find.
I hear you. I’d be upset about the Lions, but 1- I haven’t cared about football in decades, and 2- I long ago realized that the Lions are just a tax write-off for Ford.
Then again, they’re better than the Tigers this year…
Suicide seems to have become a communicable disease of epidemic proportions for the left – mizzou, evergreen, nfl, just to name a few.
Anything the Left touches is eventually devalued and then destroyed. I learned a couple of years ago that I didn’t need ESPN or the NFL.
IN a sport, profession, and business built firmly on meritocracy we are seeing “social justice” creep in as a compensatory factor for poor performance. Even when listening to ESPN on the field performance is foremost in discussion. Free agency and players issues have primarily dealt with compensation for performance. The NFL and Players’ Association are corroding their business with petty issues unrelated to football. Social justice is a lure to appeal to the younger crowd to gain viewership for the future. Minorities may be “over represented” in their business model but are not enough to pay the bills. They are playing toward their view of the changing social landscape they see. As for the Thursday night game….both teams are not premier at this time…also costs to go to games is high. People want value and those teams do not give it.
RE: “Social justice is a lure to appeal to the younger crowd to gain viewership for the future.”
Going this route guarantees the death of the NFL. There will be no future for it.
Besides the Unsocial, Injustice Wienies have been trying to kill off football – before they got overwhelmed by a Real American as President!
Wow, it turns out that working-class Americans don’t enjoy seeing lavishly-paid, semi-literate, self-aggrandizing pro athletes espousing anti-police and anti-American radical Leftist views, when they should instead be counting their blessings that they live in a country where they can amass such wealth in compensation for their “skills.”
Who knew?
NFL is all male, mostly black and almost completely non Asian. They need to concentrate on diversity and gender equality. Until Gwyneth Kate Paltrow is playing quarterback and Rosie O’Donnell is an offensive end (she is half way there already), the players social justice card does not have enough punch holes.
Well if not female then certainly the NFL should let transgenders play. Goodell is being very divisive on the transgender issue./s
O’Donnell is offensive.
why don’t we see any wheelchair transys (with aids of course) on the roster –Btw I use a wheelchair and it’s so unfair, i would even ‘play’ for a lower salary…..
can’t take a ‘knee’ by my lonesome, though.
The NFL can survive low ticket sales. What will hurt them is loss of TV viewers. When/if their TV ratings drop and stay down, then you’ll see the league and owners do something.
when the advert rates go down so will the salaries –
hope ESpeeeN goes t-ts up.
Remember what the NFL now stands for:
National FOOLS League……..
Their stockowners ought to sue them.
FYI
Prof calls diversity of thought
‘white supremacist bullshit’
At a recent conference on Critical Race Theory, professors discussed how “there is no virtue in whiteness,” with some saying “whiteness” is “inherently violent.”
Other conference-goers reportedly called the concept of intellectual diversity “white supremacist bullshit,” while another said “research” is a “colonial, white supremacist, elite process.”
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=9272
FYI
“The Nazi Mass Hysteria of 2017”
“This week, over 5,000 Leftists, liberal writers and other verified accounts, and apparently Chelsea Clinton, became absolutely convinced that I, a gay Jew, am a Nazi.
It all began with CUNY professor Angus Johnston going on a rant about why it is not only ok, but morally just, to physically assault various groups of people engaging in what he considers ‘hate.’
https://medium.com/@chadfelixg/the-nazi-mass-hysteria-of-2017-ec0899ae2cc4
Despite claims that attendance was over 70,000, anyone with eyes could see that the stadium was largely empty
Levi’s Stadium
4900 Marie P DeBartolo Way, Santa Clara, CA 95054
Capacity: 68,500 (expandable to 75,000)
Looks like far more tickets were sold than people who attended the game.
Looks like the ticket scalpers and season ticket holders who tried to sell their tickets took a big hit. The laws of (non-Marxist) economics being what they are, the owners will eventually start seeing a big decline in ticket sales. They are already seeing a huge decline in concessions revenue.
Good insight.
I take that to mean tons of those tickets were sold to “scalpers.”
Soon even the scalpers will not touch NFL tickets, recognizing them as the “Box Office Poison” that they have become.
“Tell that son of a bitch he’s fired”
That was the best moment in Donnie Orange history.
I loved the line (ignored) about the game being ruined by calls and new rules. He mentioned the “good hit” and it was immediately flagged. Trump just touched a nerve… and in a college football state… The NFL is not what it used to be. Sad.
Besides the political nonsense, that’s what my husband says. Calls, new rules, and endless replays are making it, he says, unwatchable.
Interesting that this does not seem to be an issue with MLB or the NBA. I wonder why….
NBA… hold my beer. Just wait…
It’s started already with Lebron, and Stephan Curry.
A pox on all their houses.
I think you may have spoken too soon. Lebron James has just called for an NBA boycott of the WH and called Trump bad names. I don’t think there is anything anyone can do with these fools. They are paid by middle America and that group is not liberal. If they keep on insulting us who do they think is going to buy their tickets or watch TV games?
Between this nonsense and CTE, live football is toast.
At least for the “pros for pay.”
(Hey why does that ring a bell? Pressitutes?)
Diamond and Silk “school” the NFL Loser-Wienies on dis-respecting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgGc9Iyqyp0
CTE is a real issue that’s lurking just under the radar.
I know any number of suburban moms who have decided that their sons shall not play football because of the concussion and CTE issue.
I enjoy watching football with the athleticism, the planning, and the drama. I’ll cheer the players.
But I WON’T cheer gladiators. This isn’t a coliseum with blood sport to the death. If the NFL can’t fix the CTE issue, there’s going to lose — not just fans like me, but the next generation of players.
“I know any number of suburban moms who have decided that their sons shall not play football because of the concussion and CTE issue.”
In case you haven’t noticed, that’s not football’s recruiting pool. Period. Full Stop. It will be an interesting question whether suburbia can continue to be coerced into paying the taxes that support it at the high school level….
Is your inner social justice warrior advocating that dead people should be diversityed into the NFL? Other than Kandyperky, or whatever his name is, there are far more dead people voting in elections than are playing in the NFL. The NFL should “look” like America, or at least the Chicago registered voters.
Well this is it. Forget the political wars, we are in the final frontier..the culture war. Millions of forgotten men and women are fighting back. This is going to get ugly.
Mel Brooks: “Stupid Political Correctness Has Killed Comedy”
They could always take a page out of Hillary’s playbook and have everybody sit together, then use zoomed-in camera angles to make it appear like it’s SRO.
The players have a right to protest, they do not have a right to co-opt a platform (the game) they do not own. Everyone reading this is probably familiar with the NFL’s statement during every televised game that the game is the “property” of the NFL. Nobody has a right to use another’s property for any purpose without the property owner’s consent.
What’s galling about this is Goodell’s insistence that there’s nothing he and the league can do, when the league regularly disciplines players for on- and off-field conduct. The only reason the players haven’t been disciplined is because they are almost all black and their grievance is about race. No white player protesting for a conservative cause would have been allowed to commandeer an NFL game as have the “kneelers”.
The league must assert its property rights over the game and inform the players that their conduct, all of their conduct, no matter the conduct’s purpose, on-field during the NFL’s production of a football game is subject to league review and potential disciplinary action. Had this been almost any other sort of conduct, or for any other purpose or cause, the league would have put an end to this nonsense within hours of Kaepernick taking a knee.
Concerning Goodell’s comment, General Honoree said it best, “You can’t fix stupid”!
Take away their tax exempt status, then we’ll see protests…. Can you spell monopoly? (both the game & the NFL)
Wait till the left finds out that 93% of National Hockey League players and 99.7% of World Curling Federation players are white.
I think the League should have the decency to rename itself. National Football League is just a teensie bit inappropriate if they can’t handle the rituals customarily associated with the national flag. The word National should be reserved for those who mean it.
If they can think of another word beginning with “N” they won’t have to change all their monogrammed stuff.
Sorry about the accidental downvote. I meant to hit reply.
And my reply was, I can think of a few…
So what would keep the NFL from doing the sensible thing and just ‘vanishing’ all of the players doing their little hissy-fits. Orders to the camera crews to turn away during the anthem when players take the knee, orders to the scene techs to cut away from any kneeling players, and instructions to the announcers that if they mention players taking a knee today, it will be their last game they broadcast for the next several years.
Take away their water, and let the dumb fish flop around unnoticed in the dirt while the rest of us enjoy the game.
The league’s descent into irrelevance began for me last year when the Cowboys were denied the opportunity to memorialize the five murdered Dallas police officers with something in their uniforms last summer.
It is why I will never watch another NFL game.