title: WHY FINAL “Sunday Night Football” Game Was Canceled… Is Low Attendance The Reason?
text: The NFL announced Tuesday that the final  Sunday Night Football  game of the season has been canceled Was it due to low attendance in previous weeks? Well, it s part of the reason. Low attendance has been plaguing the league since the kneeling controversy took hold.Recently, a liberal news source tried to downplay the boycott from NFL fans by citing injuries from key star athletes in the NFL as the reason for low interest in games.  We think the kneeling controversy has more to do with the lack of interest in games. It s being reported that the attendance is down 9% from last year:We ve seen stadiums with hundreds of empty seats along with low viewership.There are a few other reasons why the game was canceled but low attendance was certainly part of it:Daily Caller reports:The league had yet to announce who would play during the primetime game next Sunday, but with the chance that none of the matchups would have playoff implications for one or both of the teams, they opted not to schedule the game.NEW YEAR S EVE:The other problem the league faced was broadcasting a game on New Year s Eve, which would invite lower number of viewers traditionally on that night. We felt that both from a competitive standpoint and from a fan perspective, the most fair thing to do is to schedule all Week 17 games in either the 1 p.m. or 4:25 p.m. windows,  NFL broadcast chief Howard Katz said in a statement.The last time a  Sunday Night Football  game took place on the final night of the year was in 2006 when the Chicago Bears hosted the Green Bay Packers. That game was Hall of Fame member Brett Favre s final game with the Packers. Despite that fact, the game only drew 13.4 million viewers, which for that season was a quarter of the typical audience for  SNF. In a season plagued with lower ratings due to the national anthem protests, the league s decision was not surprising.