In 2016, when former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick first began his peaceful protest against police brutality during the National Anthem, the NFL’s ratings dipped 9% to an average of 16.5 million per game for the season. That decline carried over into 2017 before two straight seasons of improvements. Now, with teams organizing demonstrations of unity and racial quality amid the Black Lives Matter movement, audience levels are off to a mixed start despite the lack of counter-programming in the pandemic.
