Another Terrible Sign For The Future Of The NFL

The NFL's image has taken a lot of damaging blows in recent months led by the sport's concussion crisis as well as their handling of domestic violence issues. Now comes the chart below, via Statista, which shows that young people are much less likely to follow the NFL very closely at all.

What should scare the NFL is that the breakdown is very similar for the groups above the age of 29 suggesting that allegiance to the sport doesn't typically change with age. However, there is a clear drop-off in the youngest age group with only about 40% of respondents following closely or very closely compared to 49-55% for the other three groups.

For comparison, Major League Baseball, a sport that most feel is losing the younger demographic does not show a similar drop-off with 35% of US adults 18-36 following the sport compared to 36% for Americans 37-48.