The NFL season kicks off this year with teams in all but a handful of franchises seeing a path to the playoffs. Add in the allure of gambling and fantasy football, and it’s no wonder that football is Americans’ favorite sport to watch at 41%, four times baseball (10%) and basketball (9%), per Gallup’s latest survey.
All those eyeballs mean money—lots and lots of money.
The Premier League has the biggest global reach of any sports league, and MLB’s origins date back 150 years, but the NFL is the undisputed king at making a buck.
The NFL’s 32 teams generated an estimated $22.2 billion last year, up 8% from 2023, and total NFL revenue topped $23 billion, as some revenue stays at the league level. It is well ahead of the pace needed to meet commissioner Roger Goodell’s 2010 revenue target of $25 billion by 2027—which raised eyebrows at the time, when league revenues were $8 billion.
The 2024 tally is 74% higher than MLB—the gap was 29% 20 years ago. The Premier League only has 20 teams, but its $8 billion for the 2023-24 season is more akin to the NHL ($7.5 billion) than American football. NBA teams made roughly $11.6 billion during the 2023-24 season.
Teams in these leagues all generate revenue the same way: from gate receipts, sponsorships, concessions, merchandise, luxury suites, media contracts and other events at their venues, such as concerts. But the scale of the revenue streams varies wildly in the different sports.
The average NFL franchise is worth $7.13 billion, per Sportico’s NFL team valuations. That figure is up 20% over 2024 and double the average from four years ago. The league’s evenly distributed central revenue means every team is worth at least $5.5 billion. There are only 14 non-NFL sports franchises in the world worth more than the 32nd-ranked Cincinnati Bengals.
In 2024, NFL teams received nearly $14 billion, or $433 million apiece, from leaguewide media, sponsorship, licensing and merchandise deals, which represented 62% of total team revenues. The Dallas Cowboys were the only franchise to generate more from local revenue than national distributions—it was 50-50 for the Los Angeles Rams.
TV is the driving force of the league’s distribution, which rose 7.5% in 2024 and is on track for a similar gain this year. The current TV contracts are worth $12 billion a year on average, and owners are expected to opt out of the deals in 2029 after seeing how much ESPN, NBC and Amazon committed to the NBA in last year’s 11-year, $77 billion agreement.
NFL games represented 72 of the 100 most-watched TV broadcasts in 2024, which was down from 93 the prior year that, unlike 2024, did not include a presidential election or the Summer Olympics. Yet, the NBA’s new TV pacts have NBC and Amazon paying more annually for its basketball package than for football, and ESPN almost at par.
The NBA’s new TV deals will move it closer to the NFL model, with central revenue a larger piece of the pie. For the 2023-24 season, the NBA’s national revenue represented 40% of team revenue. MLB, where franchise value gains have severely lagged the NFL and NBA, also wants to centralize more rights, particularly with media. Its league distribution was 25% of team revenue in 2024.
Tickets and luxury suites are the next largest revenue bucket for NFL teams at $4.1 billion, or 19% of the total pie. Demand continues to outstrip supply for NFL tickets, with each team hosting only 10 home games per year, including preseason, and almost every stadium at or near capacity.
The San Francisco 49ers led the NFL in ticket revenue for the third straight year at $176 million after local taxes but before the visiting teams’ share (VTS)—NFL bylaws require teams to share 34% of ticket revenue with other clubs. They were followed by the Cowboys ($136 million), Philadelphia Eagles ($130 million), Denver Broncos ($129 million) and Miami Dolphins ($127 million).
The Tennessee Titans ($81 million), Indianapolis Colts ($83.3 million) and Arizona Cardinals ($83.4 million) ranked at the bottom. The Eagles ranked third in 2024 net gate receipts despite losing a home game when they “hosted” the Packers in Brazil last year. The money from international games and the NFL playoffs flows back to teams through the central revenue distribution.
Included in the $4.1 billion is the NFL’s shared gate receipt system, VTS. It was $27 million per team in 2024 from regular season and preseason games.
The Cowboys had the highest luxury suite revenue at roughly $130 million. The appetite for premium experiences has exploded at sports stadiums and is a priority for new buildings opening in Buffalo, Cleveland, Tennessee and Washington, D.C.
Team sponsorship revenue was an estimated $2.3 billion last year, or 10% of the league total. Dallas led the way again at more than $250 million, while the Atlanta Falcons, Rams and New England Patriots all earned more than $100 million from sponsors. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was the driving force in revolutionizing team sponsorships after he bought the team in 1989 for $150 million. He pushed for teams to gain control of more inventory and opportunities that were previously restricted by league rules.
Stadium naming rights are the biggest sponsorship asset but represent only 11% of total sponsorship revenue, by Sportico’s count. The Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers are the only teams that play in stadiums without corporate names.
Revenue from concessions, parking, team stores and non-NFL events was $1.55 billion, or 7% of total revenue. Event revenue, such as concerts, dropped after the category got a major boost in 2023 from Taylor Swift, as she performed all 53 of her U.S. shows in NFL stadiums. Swift kept almost all ticket revenue, with teams entitled to a small cut or rental fee for their venue. Yet, teams cashed in with concessions, parking and merchandise at the sold-out events, as well as from hefty premium seating demand. In 2024, she performed nine shows at NFL venues in Indianapolis, Miami and New Orleans.
And while the NBA NHL and MLB fret about their local TV revenue with the ongoing messiness in the RSN business, the NFL emerges unscathed there, as well. Almost all the TV inventory is controlled at the league level, and the only local media rights are from radio and preseason games. Local media represented less than 2% of overall revenue, versus a recently reduced 19% for MLB.
In addition to the highest revenue in sports, NFL owners benefit from a relatively hard salary cap that was $255 million last year. Each team was also on the hook for $74 million in benefits payments, but the combined outlay is still $100 million short of the $433 million check from the league before teams sold a ticket, sponsorship or beer.
The result: an average profit of $151 million, based on earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The range was $80 million for the 49ers, which were saddled with high cash player costs in 2024, to $490 million for the Cowboys. By contrast, the 20 EPL clubs lost money overall during the 2023-24 season, and five of them lost more than $60 million after player trading.
