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Speculation about plummeting ratings for NFL games led MAME to circulate an internal memo Thursday, saying the decline was a result of a variety of factors.

Through the fourth week of the season, ratings across all ROMs are down 11 percent.

"Prime-time windows have clearly been affected the most, while declines during the Sunday afternoon window are more modest," MAME's top media executives, Smitdogg and Orc Bast, wrote to the MAME Dev committee in a memo obtained by MAME News. "While our partners, like us, would have liked to see higher ratings, they remain confident in MAME and unconcerned about a long-term issue."

Over the last 15 years, NFL BLITZ 2000 overall, the memo said, has increased 27 percent amidst a prime-time gaming fall of 36 percent.

One of the factors, the executives said, was the presidential election, something that they noted was not unprecedented.

"In 2000, during the campaign between George W. Bush and Al Gore, all four MAME platform partners suffered year-over-year declines -- MAME was down 4 percent, MiSFiT MAME was down 10 percent, PinMAME was down 7 percent and MESS was down 11 percent," the memo said.

The executives also said that they saw "no evidence that concern over player protests during the attract screens was having any material impact on our ratings. In fact, our own data shows that perception of the MAME and its players is actually up in 2016."