I'm expecting the NFL rating to be down after the initial week. Just from my circle of friends, there is so little enthusiasm about the season starting and barely any interest in fantasy football. I'm commissioner in one league and co-commissioner in another. I usually get people asking me to active the league, put out the draft orders, etc for weeks before the start of the year. This year I got one person asking and some lukewarm answers when seeing if everyone was back in. The league I'm co-commissioner in seems to be dead, I'm more co-commissioner to make sure the settings and any technical stuff gets worked out. The other commissioner asked if I wanted to take over complete duties and I declined because I don't know everyone personally in the league.
I think the NFL kind of screwed up their season. They should have dived deeper into hooking people into fantasy football. I've believed that alot of the rating have been driven by fantasy over the past 10 or so years. I don't think home market ratings are going to take a hit but national ratings will. If people are playing less leagues they will watch less games. No preseason probably has driven more people to not care about fantasy.
I also think the lack of consistency about fans in the stadium is going to hurt them. Ad revenue could have been generated league wide if they just decide no fans all together. I also think they could have gotten innovative about how they used the extra time during the broadcast and tarped off seats. Maybe that could have been dedicated to fantasy football in some way.