Sportsnaut
How much revenue does the NFL generate every year? The National Football League is the most popular sport in the United States and is the king of television. It should come as no surprise that NFL revenue is skyrocketing and the league’s future is extremely promising.
The inflated salaries for players and coaches can all be attributed to the skyrocketing NFL salary cap, which has exploded from $123.6 million in 2013 to $224.8 million this season. With the salary cap tied to NFL revenue, it’s time to take a look at where all of this money comes from.
Here’s a breakdown of NFL revenue by year, how it compares to other pro sports and where it comes from.
NFL revenue eclipsed $23 billion across the 2024 fiscal year, as reported by Ben Fischer of the Sports Business Journal. It marked the second consecutive year where NFL revenue jumped by at least $2 billion and represented record-setting revenue for the league once again.
In addition, NFL teams received $416 million each from the league’s distribution of revenue generated from television deals, sponsorships and licensing agreements across the 2024 NFL season. That is an 8.9 percent increase from the distribution for the 2023 season ($382 million). Below you can find the NFL revenue by year since the 2017 season.
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It’s estimated that NFL revenue during the 2023-’24 season approached $20 billion. Of that figure, more than $11 billion came from the league’s broadcasting partners, per Yahoo Finance, with the second-highest source of revenue coming from ticket and merchandise sales in 2023.
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A majority of NFL revenue comes directly from its television and streaming partners. The NFL sells the broadcasting rights to its preseason, regular season and playoff games to broadcasters in multi-year deals for billions of dollars per season. Here’s a breakdown of how much each of the NFL’s broadcasting partners are paying for the annual rights to games.
In 2024, Netflix agreed to a multi-year year deal with the NFL for the exclusive streaming rights to two Christmas Day games during the 2024 NFL season and at least one each in 2025 and ’26. Amazon is also picking up a Christmas Day game in 2025, while adding the Black Friday and a Wild Card Game to its streaming schedule for the 2024 season.
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