Fans of the National Football League (NFL) seem to have changed their minds about Colin Kaepernick, according to a survey by GamblersPick, an online casino review platform.
A report by The Hill states the survey included 1,003 fans of the NFL, sourced from Amazon’s crowdsourcing marketplace, Mechanical Turk.
Kaepernick made headlines in 2016 when he and Eric Reid knelt during the national anthem at the preseason finale game in protest of police brutality.
So what does the survey say about what NFL fans are thinking now?
Of the 1,003 fans surveyed, 49.6% say they changed their mind about Kaepernick’s decision to kneel. In 2016, 28% of the fans surveyed said they opposed the action.
The survey participants were 64.7% men, 35% were women, and two participants identified as nonbinary.
Sixty-nine percent of NFL fans support the Black Lives Matter movement, while nearly 15% oppose it, according to the survey.
Eleven percent of fans surveyed said they would no longer watch games if players protested or outwardly support the Black Lives Matter movement.
This figure varied across teams. Dallas Cowboys, Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers’ fans showed more opposition to players’ protests than fans of the Seattle Seahawks, Carolina Panthers, and Baltimore Ravens, whose fans showed greater approval of social justice movements.
Fans of the Green Bay Packers, Houston Texans, and New England Patriots did not generally weigh in one way or another in terms of politics.
In response to the protests of police brutality and racial injustice that took place over the summer, the NFL started the first week of games by playing the Black National Anthem, “Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing,” a move that 1 in 4 fans opposed.
Eighty percent of fans showed greater concern for the coronavirus pandemic’s effects on the season than the Black Lives Matter movement.
Kaepernick remains unsigned and remains committed to working on civil rights and social reform through his organization, Know Your Rights Camp.
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