Per his lawyer, Colin Kaepernick will be playing for an NFL team within the next ten days, which means by week nine. While that may please the few who believe he was shut out for racial reasons, a Colin Kaepernick return cannot be good for the NFL, those who pay to broadcast its games, or its sponsors as the protest he began has put a huge dent into the league’s reputation as a premier advertising vehicle.
Per the Sporting News, “the NFL’s once-golden network TV numbers continue to drop. NFL games averaged 15.1 million viewers through Week 7, according to Nielsen data obtained by Sporting News. That’s down 5.1 percent from 15.87 million viewers during the same period last season and off 18.7 percent from 18.35 million viewers during the same period in 2015.”
Advertisers who use the NFL do so because there is no other way to build a
