The NFL is invested in flag football being a big part of its future. Perhaps in that future, more people will be interested in watching it on television.
The Fanatics Flag Football Classic, produced by Fanatics Studios, was hyped to the moon when Tom Brady announced he was “coming out of retirement” to headline the event, which was intended to take place in Saudi Arabia. The rosters included a who’s who of active and retired NFL players, such as Jayden Daniels, Saquon Barkley, CeeDee Lamb, Christian McCaffrey, Sauce Gardner, Myles Garrett, Brock Bowers, Maxx Crosby, Tyreek Hill, Odell Beckham Jr., and Rob Gronkowski, as well as internet celebrities such as iShowSpeed and Logan Paul.
The game was moved from Riyadh to Los Angeles due to escalating global tensions amid the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran and its impact on neighboring countries. Brady and others spent a lot of time hyping up the event and manufacturing drama to goose eyeballs on Fox, which was broadcasting the game.
Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to work inside the stadium or on televisions. The event averaged right around 650,000 viewers, according to Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal. The game peaked at 909,000 viewers and had a total reach of 2.8 million on linear TV.
That’s about the same as a generic regular-season college basketball game or what a UFL game usually gets.
It probably didn’t help that the rescheduled tournament was competing with the NCAA men’s basketball tournament second round and the NCAA women’s basketball tournament first round. The heavily hyped NFL players and celebrities also struggled to keep up with the U.S. men’s national flag football team and fully understand the rules of the game, likely dampening interest.
According to a press release, the game fared better on social media accounts and streamers where it was simulcast. When combined with social media clips shared on Fox and Fanatics’ channels, it reportedly generated “over 300 million views across broadcast and all platforms,” though it’s unclear what that number actually means and how legitimate some of those platforms’ metrics are.
Brady said afterward that he’d like to see the flag football rules tweaked so they more closely resemble tackle football, which seems to go against the point of the whole endeavor, but maybe that would help audiences get interested.
