Whether it be the glitz and the glamour of the Super Bowl or the worldwide celebrity of some of the sport’s biggest stars, the NFL is much more than just a football league. On the field, 32 teams compete across two conferences, the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC), that each consist of four divisions. Off the field, multi-million dollar contracts, brand endorsements, and superstar fans make the NFL one of the most popular sports leagues in the world. The pinnacle of the season is the championship game, more commonly known as the
. The annual game draws in
every year, making it one of the highlights of the sporting calendar.
How do NFL revenues compare to other leagues?
The NFL as a whole increased its revenue every year for almost 20 years, from around six billion U.S. dollars in 2004 to more than 20 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. Indeed, when comparing the NFL’s revenue to other big leagues in North America, football always comes out on top. The revenue of Major League Baseball (MLB) was at 11.34 billion U.S. dollars in 2023, the same figure that was also reported by the National Basketball Association (NBA) in the 2023/24 season. Meanwhile, the revenue of the National Hockey League (NHL) stood at around 6.43 in the 2022/23, highlighting the NFL’s standing as a giant among the professional sports leagues.
What are the biggest NFL franchises?
The Dallas Cowboys were the highest-grossing team in the league in 2023, generating around 1.2 billion U.S. dollars in revenue, with the Las Vegas Raiders, the Los Angeles Rams, the New England Patriots, and the New York Giants rounding out the top five in terms of revenue in that year. The Cowboys were also the most valuable franchise in the NFL, with a value of over 10 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. At the other end of the scale, the Cincinnati Bengals were estimated as being the least valuable, with a worth of just over four billion U.S. dollars. League-wide, the average value of NFL franchises was estimated at just under 5.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2024, demonstrating significant growth in overall team values since the turn of the century. Compared to the NBA, MLB, and the NHL, franchises of the NFL were generally estimated to be the most valuable among major sports leagues in North America.
High attendance across the league
The NFL was also the professional sports league with the highest average per game attendance, drawing almost 70 thousand average spectators per game and more than 18.8 million in total throughout the 2024 season. While this figure predictably dropped during the COVID-hit 2020 season, total regular season attendance rose to higher than pre-pandemic levels in ensuing seasons. The passion for NFL displayed by its fans can be further explored in the Statista Global Consumer Survey’s Playbook on NFL Fans 2022.
The Super Bowl
The NFL’s annual championship game, the Super Bowl, is one of the biggest single-day sports events in the world, drawing high television ratings each year and generating several billion U.S. dollars in consumer spending. The Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots are the joint most successful teams of all time at the Super Bowl, having both lifted the coveted Vince Lombardi Trophy a total of six times each.
With record attendances and TV viewership of the Super Bowl hitting an all-time high, it appears that the National Football League is perfectly positioned to reach even higher levels of popularity and revenue in the coming years.
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