Outside of the Super Bowl, NFL’s opening night game on Thursday between the New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs is one of the league’s biggest moments.
But it was the liberal sideshow on the sidelines — started last year by now-unemployed quarterback Colin Kaepernick — that got most of the attention.
After Chiefs cornerback Marcus Peters disgraced America by sitting down during the national anthem, though, it was patriotic Americans that had the last laugh.
Viewers had enough… and across the United States, millions of people turned off their television sets in disgust.
https://twitter.com/davidphotokc/status/905954399511597056
As a result, Thursday’s NFL game national ratings plummeted to the lowest level in five years.
Only 21.8 million NFL fans tuned in to watch the game and celebrate the kickoff of the 2017 regular season — down a staggering 13% from last year’s opener.
In fact, since the national anthem protests began, NFL viewership has been on a steep and steady decline.
“The game was the least viewed season opener in half a decade, which is not good news for the NFL as last season saw a double-digit drop in viewership after players protested the national anthem,” The Daily Wire reported.
This is the first time in five years that the audience of the kickoff game was below 25 million.
In fact, total viewership was down nearly six million sets of eyeballs from the all-time high ratings for the kickoff game in 2010. That’s a million more people than live in all of Ireland.
Overall, analysts project ratings in 2017 will be down over 8% for the NFL across the board — a loss that could cost team owners hundreds of millions of dollars.
It turns out disrespecting America isn’t good for business.
— The Horn editorial team