As part of the NFL’s announcement that this season’s playoffs will be expanded, the league is making an aggressive move to attract younger fans.
One of those extra playoff games will be broadcast not only by CBS but also by Nickelodeon, with a separately produced telecast of the game tailored for a younger audience.
There have been some concerns within the NFL in recent years that young kids aren’t as into football as kids were a generation or two ago. It’s clear that putting a game on Nickelodeon, and gearing the broadcast toward younger viewers, is an effort to change that.
What’s unknown is how a Nickelodeon-produced game will differ from a typical NFL game. We won’t be seeing green slime dumped on the referee if he misses a call, but we might see a younger team of broadcasters, and a presentation that looks more like a video game. The Nickelodeon broadcast surely won’t draw an audience anything close to the size of the CBS audience, but if Nickelodeon can bring in even a small number of additional young viewers, the NFL will see value in that.
