The turnover of the NFL
Despite some image problems linked to alleged discriminatory policies regarding athletes and members of staff belonging to minorities and on the risks to the health of players especially for head injuries, the NFL is a league in full health that shatters record after record in terms of takings.
From 2023, the 32 NFL franchises will get around 10 billion per season from TV. Fox, Espn, Amazon, Nbc and CBS, will pay a total of 110 billion dollars up to 2033 to broadcast, also on the respective streaming platforms, in specific slots the games of the ordinary season and the play-offs. In the Nfl the races are relatively few (16 per year per team, plus a maximum of 4 in the playoffs including the final). Espn-Disney from 2022 (the current contract expires one year before the others) will pay about 2.7 billion dollars to be able to broadcast Monday Night Football and to be able to broadcast SuperBowl starting from the 2026 season. The agreement also applies to con Amazon, which will broadcast the Thursday night matches on its Prime Video platform.
In addition to TV revenues, the franchises can count on huge revenues linked to the box office (with an average of over 60 thousand spectators), from merchandising and sponsorships. The latter are leading to constantly growing results. The NFL has in fact entered into contracts worth 1.8 billion dollars in 2021, as reported by the consulting company IEG. With an increase of 12% compared to 2020 (when the collection was equal to 1.6 billion). The American football league is therefore set to register an annual turnover of over $ 15 billion.
Sponsors
The three most profitable product sectors for the NFL are the technological one, that relating to sports betting and gambling and finally that of alcoholic beverages (while there is a caution towards cryptocurrencies). Microsoft, for example, has a deal with NFL (whose teams use the Surface tablet) worth $ 100 million a year. The NFL recently renewed with Anheuser-Busch, which pays 250 million a year for a partnership related to beer and hard seltzer. While DraftKings, FanDuel and Caesars have been sports betting partners since 2021, with five-year contracts worth just under $ 1 billion.
It should be noted that the growth of sponsorships is concentrated on the league and the championship, while the partnerships of the individual clubs have recorded additional revenues with an increase of only 4%. It is no coincidence that the NLF has just allowed 18 teams to individually sign commercial agreements in 26 territories, including Canada, Germany, Mexico and the United Kingdom.