NFL wants their overrated fans to pay for games?

While there's been no formal announcement that this will even happen in the near future, there has been some grumblings that the NFL will move it's games to a pay-per-view format. And at first that makes sense since people seem willing to pay of NFL Ticket Packages on Direct TV (Which is every single game for 80 dollars or something along those lines), but cutting off every single game to free broadcasts seem like something that would alienate a lot of fans in the football league.

Here's the thing - the NFL has a lot of fans, probably the most popular league in the world. However, a lot of these fans are casual fans, a detail that I would bet money on. Most people pick a team, root for them on Sunday, they might go to the occasional game (but attendance numbers are artificially bloated since there's only one game a week), they might buy a jersey or some merchandise, but overall they wont hold a candle to a rabid NBA fan or a MLB fan that has to follow their team through a long, grueling season.

NFL fans enjoy their league because it's very convenient and not very time-consuming. You take a few hours out on Sundays and you're good. You start charging 40 bucks a game and you'll see your fan base and overall media interest dwindle.

Look what happened to boxing.

I'm not saying it would kill football, but now the casual fans aren't going to be able to watch their team, meaning they won't talk to their buddies about their team and the overall buzz of the league will be down. Some of the die-hard people will pay 40 bucks a game, but you're going to price out a lot of the casual to fringe fans that your league lives off of.

Die hards will always be there regardless. The fringe fans are the difference between a Neilson rating of 2 for the NHL Stanley Cup Finals and a 10 for the NBA Finals.

Some people just watch the games because it's on and it's football, and you start to charge them and they'd much rather spend the Sunday outside. They're fans of convenience... and like I said before, that's a lot of fans in the NFL.