NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith may be interested in taking a page from the NBA in order to attempt to curb his league's declining ratings.
"I think that it's important to take a look at what's going on in basketball, because for the most part, I think they are the only sport that more and more people are watching," Smith said Saturday, according to Dan Graziano of ESPN.
"They do, I think, a great job of marketing their individual players, sometimes at a time when the (NFL) looks for ways to take their star players off the field," said Smith.
Smith acknowledged the fact that NFL games ranked as more than 30 of the top 50 shows across the league's broadcast partners in 2017, but he remains concerned in the overall decline of television ratings and how those affect sports broadcasts.
"I think that, given the year-over-year ratings issue in football, it begs the question, 'Should we be doing something different?' And that might mean the restructuring of the season in a way to make it more fan-friendly," said Smith.
He pointed out divisional games and playoff games as still drawing higher viewership, hinting at a possible schedule model that would include fewer preseason and regular-season games, and another round of playoff games.
"You look at the ratings, and you see that marquee matchups buck the trend on declining ratings," Smith said. "And you also know that there's groups of games, and let's just say preseason games to start with. ... It's hard to find a fan that wants to buy a preseason ticket or wants to watch a preseason game. So to me, you're being intellectually dishonest if you don't want to look at both of those issues."
