The Rams Are Getting Better TV Ratings In St. Louis Than In L.A.

Right now, there’s hardly anything good you could say about the Rams. They’ve lost nine of their last ten games. They fired their head coach. Their star prospect, Jared Goff, has thrown more interceptions (five) than touchdowns (four).

Now comes another piece of gloomy news: the team has better TV ratings in St. Louis (their former home) than they do in Los Angeles. According to the St Louis Post Dispatch, ratings tracker Nielsen says that, in St. Louis, 10.6% of homes with a TV tuned into the Rams’ matchup against the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday. This was a notch above the 10.2% they got in Los Angeles. What’s more, the games have been averaging 9.4% across all games this season in Los Angeles. As noted by the Post Dispatch, while they were in St. Louis the Rams had never fallen below that mark in a single game. The L.A. Rams’ only bright spot (in terms of ratings) has been their home opener, which drew in 16.1%.

Of course, since L.A. is much bigger than St. Louis, you could argue that it’s just logically easier to find a higher concentration of TV viewership in the latter city. But, as noted at Yahoo Sports, on any given game day Angelenos are turning into other games that are happening; on November 28, more Angelenos tuned into the matchups between the Oakland Raiders and the Carolina Panthers, as well as the Denver Broncos and the Kansas City Chiefs, than they did with the Rams and New Orleans Saints game.

Of course, the ratings issue goes hand-in-hand with other prevailing problems. There’s the matter of IRL viewership, too. According to ESPN, the Rams are filling up 89.4% of the seats for their home games. This ranks them fourth from last. The other teams at the bottom? The Raiders and the San Diego Chargers, who are both heavily rumored to be leaving their respective cities after this season. The attendance issue is a tricky one to grasp, however, as some people point out that the Memorial Coliseum can seat upwards of 90,000 people, making it one of the largest stadiums being used in the NFL. Likewise, it’d be hard for the Rams to fill up all those seats. But it remains that L.A. is a market of 4 million people, and the evidence on social media hasn’t been very flattering:

In somewhat related news, reporters say that the Chargers are on the verge of moving to L.A.; owners have until January 15 to decide if the team will join the Rams at the upcoming Inglewood stadium. But, considering the waning fanfare for the NFL in L.A., would the Chargers actually want to move here?