• by Wayne Friedman , December 23, 2022

Amidst its steady industry-leading TV viewership, The NFL, which is the most lucrative TV program property, has decreased its overall national linear TV brand airings by 28% this year, according to iSpot.tv, due to program shifts to streaming platforms.

So far this year there have been 6,095 national TV airings of NFL promotional messages from September through December 22 -- garnering 4.0 billion impressions -- from $75.5 million in paid spending, according to estimates from iSpot.tv.

A year ago, there were some 8,453 airings, with 5.1 billion impressions coming from an estimated $99.9 million in national TV linear spend.

Much of this could be attributable to “Thursday Night Football” games now airing exclusively on Amazon. The “TNF” package was on Fox Television Network/NFL Network a year ago.

Starting next year, more traditional TV-to-streaming program shifts will occur as the league’s valuable NFL Sunday Ticket package of out-of -market games moves to YouTube streaming platforms from satellite TV provider, DirecTV.

Heavy promotion continued to go to its major TV networks partners this year: CBS (1.04 billion impressions); NBC (812.1 million); Fox (720.7 million); ESPN (386.8 million); and the NFL Network (335.3 million).

Through December 22, the average NFL is virtually flat versus a year ago, down 1% to 16.2 million average viewers per game, according to Nielsen measured data.

After 15 weeks of the NFL season so far, national TV advertising spend on NFL games has totaled $4.6 billion and 127 billion impressions, according to iSpot. Through the same period a year ago: $4.9 billion in national linear TV ad spend, producing 118.1 billion impressions.