Monday Night Football is down 24 percent through the first seven weeks of 2016 compared to 2015. Sean McDonough replaced Mike Tirico as the play-by-play man for ESPN's telecasts this season with Tirico going to NBC.

Sunday Night Football is down 19 percent and Thursday Night Football is down 18 percent.

Regionalized games are down as well though at far less dramatic levels at nine percent for CBS and one percent for Fox.

The NFL's television viewership in the United Kingdom has reportedly been spun to be placed in a more positive light than what the actual numbers indicate.

There was supposedly an 80 percent increase in viewership but that's a cumulative number and this year includes new highlight shows on the BBC.

A better apples-to-apples comparison for TV viewership in the UK is how this year’s first London game, Colts-Jaguars, fared on BBC2 compared to last year’s Bills-Jaguars game in London. And on that score, the NFL isn’t growing in London: The Colts-Jaguars game drew 351,000 viewers on BBC2, a decrease compared to the 381,000 viewers for Bills-Jaguars last year on BBC2. This year’s Colts-Jaguars game did draw a larger audience than last year’s other early London game on BBC2, Jets-Dolphins, although that game’s ratings were lower because it aired at the same time as the Rugby World Cup.

Less than one percent of people in the United Kingdom watch a typical NFL game.

The Oakland Raiders gave a presentation about their current stadium situation to the NFL's other owners on Wednesday.

Roger Goodell said they’re still collecting information about Nevada’s plan to build an NFL stadium and whether having the Raiders in Vegas would work for the league.

“There’s still a great deal of information that we need to gather with respect to the circumstances we see in Las Vegas, the opportunities and the challenges,” Goodell said.

Goodell did not express any hesitation about playing in Las Vegas at all.

Brian Sandoval, governor of Nevada, signed a bill on Monday that clears the way for the Raiders to build a stadium in Las Vegas.

Sandoval and Mark Davis joined hardhat-wearing construction workers and mask-wearing Raiders fans for the ceremony at UNLV.

"Las Vegas is ready for this. Nevada is ready for this," Sandoval said in an interview afterward. "The best brand on the planet is coming together with one of the best brands in professional sports. It is truly one of those situations where 1+1(equals)3."

Nevada lawmakers narrowly approved a deal in a special session last week that increases hotel taxes in the Las Vegas area to raise $750 million for a stadium and more than $400 million to expand and upgrade the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Sheldon Adelson is putting $650 million toward the project, while the Raiders and the NFL will kick in $500 million. C

The NFL owners have approached the NFL Players Association several times over the past few months about an extension of the current collective bargaining agreement.

One reason the owners want an extension is because they have exhausted all of the stadium credits that were negotiated in the 10-year deal with the players that was signed in 2011. 

The NFL would like to secure money to help fund a stadium in Las Vegas for the Raiders and possibly another in San Diego.

The NFLPA would listen to the league's overtures, but it's likely the players would require somewhat significant concessions from the owners to agree to an extension at this point. 

ESPN, Fox, NBC and CBS are spending an average of $5 billion a year combined for NFL rights through 2021.

This season, network viewership is down about 10% from last season, according to Nielsen data, with steeper declines for prime-time games on Sunday, Monday and Thursday. 

“We’re scratching our heads,” said Andy Donchin, a media buyer at Amplifi US, an ad-buying unit of Dentsu Aegis Network, whose clients include General Motors Co. “We cannot pinpoint any specific reason why the numbers are down. It is probably being caused by a confluence of events.”

The election has been cited as a potential factor.

Rating declines for Sunday afternoon aren’t nearly as steep as the prime-time telecasts, but Fox and CBS are down, while cable news ratings are up.

“The election is probably the biggest factor that you could point to,” said Fox Sports President Eric Shanks.

Another factor has been Tom Brady on a four-game suspension, the retirement of Peyton Manning and injuries to Tony Romo and Adrian Peterson.

“We’re missing some stars out there,” said Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s head of media, who noted the NFL has gotten off to slow starts before “and [has] done just fine.”

ESPN has experienced the biggest drop, down 17% to an average 11.3 million viewers. Excluding the game up against the debate, ESPN is off 11%. NBC is down 13% from last season.

On Sunday afternoons, CBS and Fox are both down 3% in viewers.

“In all honesty, we don’t see any evidence of that,” Rolapp said when asked if some of the negative stories surrounding the NFL are hurting ratings. “We’ve been in the news in other ways before and haven’t seen a material impact on ratings.”

The NFL has added synthetic marijuana to the list of banned substances within its 2016 drug policy, according to a joint announcement Wednesday from the league and the NFL Players Association.

Any player whose drug test reveals more than 2.5 ng/ML of synthetic cannabinoids will be in violation and subject to the normal course of intervention and potential discipline. It is one of nine drugs, including cocaine, PCP and traditional marijuana, that are part of the NFL's standard drug testing panel. The policy is developed jointly by the league and the NFL Players Association.

The NFL has experienced at least one high-profile incident related to synthetic marijuana. In January, then-New England Patriots defensive end Chandler Jones behaved bizarrely, reportedly after using the drug. Police records obtained by ESPN showed he arrived at a Foxborough, Massachusetts, police station seeking help for a bad reaction. He was soon transported to a local hospital but returned to work at the Patriots' facility the next day.

Jones was traded to the Arizona Cardinals during the offseason.

Ratings for the NFL are down to begin the 2016 season, continuing a year-wide trend in the sports industry.

“Sunday Night Football,” television’s highest-rated prime-time show for five years running, has seen a 10 percent viewership drop so far this season. Cable’s top sports property, “Monday Night Football,” is down 19 percent.

Ratings for the Olympics were down, as were ESPN's "Sunday Night Baseball" series.

The NBA and college football have seen increases.

“All these sports go through cycles,” said Artie Bulgrin, ESPN’s senior vice president of global research and analytics. “It’s impossible to suggest that there’s anything going wrong here, particularly in light of the fact that we are in a really odd year in terms of the protracted presidential race, which has captured the attention of Americans going back a year now. Plus, it’s an Olympic year, which clearly had an impact during the summer.”

Even with the decline, sports programming still dominates television ratings.

Last year, 93 of TV’s top 100-rated shows were live sports programs. Ten years earlier, in 2005, live sports accounted for only 14 of the top 100.

The election could also be playing a role in sports ratings.