Young Americans prefer viewing eSports as NFL ratings tank

A new study says young American adults are spending far more time watching eSports online than traditional sports, while the new National Football League season’s TV ratings are tanking (again).

Limelight Networks has released a white paper on the State of Online Video 2017, which showed US adults watch online sports coverage for an average of 1.37 hours per week compared to 1.15 hours for online video gaming and events (aka eSports). The global averages were 1.35 hours per week of traditional sports and 1.03 hours of eSports.

However, male viewers aged 18-25 years consumed 1.95 hours per week of eSports content compared to 1.67 hours of traditional sports. Females of the same age watched 0.82 hours of eSports compared to 0.74 hours for traditional sports.

For those younger male viewers, eSports ranked second only to movies (2.02 hours) as the most popular online video content. For young females, eSports ranked second from the bottom, behind TV shows, movies, user generated content and news, with traditional sports coming dead last.