{"id":834432,"date":"2026-03-26T08:05:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T08:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/834432\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T08:05:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T08:05:16","slug":"fanatics-flag-football-classic-draws-underwhelming-tv-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/834432\/","title":{"rendered":"Fanatics Flag Football Classic draws underwhelming TV audience"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The Fanatics Flag Football Classic, produced by Fanatics Studios, was hyped to the moon when Tom Brady announced he was \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/nfl\/tom-brady-flag-football-saudi-arabia.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">coming out of retirement<\/a>\u201d to headline the event, which was intended to take place in Saudi Arabia.\u00a0The rosters included a who\u2019s 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\u00a0and\u00a0Logan Paul.<\/p>\n<p>The game was <a href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/nfl\/tom-brady-fanatics-flag-football-ridyah-united-states.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">moved from Riyadh to Los Angeles<\/a> 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 <a href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/pop-culture\/tom-brady-cuts-promo-logan-paul-athletic-prowess-saudi-arabia-flag-footbal-game.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">hyping up the event<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/nfl\/rob-gronkowski-fight-logan-paul-flag-football-game-whoop.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">manufacturing drama<\/a> to goose eyeballs on Fox, which was broadcasting the game.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, that <a href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/fox\/tom-brady-return-fanatics-flag-football-classic-empty-seats.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">didn\u2019t seem to work inside the stadium<\/a> or on televisions. The event averaged right around 650,000 viewers, according to\u00a0Austin Karp of\u00a0Sports Business Journal. The game peaked at 909,000 viewers and had a total reach of 2.8 million on linear TV.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s about the same as a generic regular-season college basketball game or <a href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/ufl\/ufl-massive-ratings-hit-second-season.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">what a UFL game usually gets<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It probably didn\u2019t help that the rescheduled tournament was competing with the NCAA men\u2019s basketball tournament second round and the NCAA women\u2019s basketball tournament first round. The heavily hyped NFL players and celebrities also struggled to keep up with the U.S. men\u2019s national flag football team and fully understand the rules of the game, likely dampening interest.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019 channels, it reportedly generated \u201cover 300 million views across broadcast and all platforms,\u201d though it\u2019s unclear what that number actually means and how legitimate some of those platforms\u2019 metrics are.<\/p>\n<p>Brady said afterward that he\u2019d like to see the flag football rules <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcsports.com\/nfl\/profootballtalk\/rumor-mill\/news\/tom-brady-wants-flag-football-to-look-more-like-tackle-football\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">tweaked so they more closely resemble tackle football<\/a>, which seems to go against the point of the whole endeavor, but maybe that would help audiences get interested.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NFL is invested in flag football being a big part of its future. Perhaps in that future,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":834433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[24051,114277,4530,7,1369],"class_list":["post-834432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-fanatics","tag-fanatics-flag-football-classic","tag-flag-football","tag-football","tag-tom-brady"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116294446414044038","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}