The National Football League (NFL) is edging closer to its longstanding goal of achieving $25 billion in annual revenue.
Last season, the league’s national revenue reached nearly $12 billion with the implementation of Amazon’s new $1.2 billion media rights deal for “Thursday Night Football,” marking a 7% increase from the previous year’s $11.1 billion, according to Forbes.
When factoring in the local earnings of teams, it is likely that the NFL approached $20 billion in total revenue in 2022.
The league evenly distributes its revenue among its 32 teams, resulting in each club receiving $372 million from the NFL’s national revenue pool last year. The primary portion of this payment, amounting to $249 million, stems from media rights deals that accumulate to more than $10 billion on an annual basis.
The total revenue pool is expected to continue growing as YouTube takes over the rights to “NFL Sunday Ticket” this season, paying an annual fee of $2 billion, surpassing DirecTV’s previous yearly fee of $1.5 billion.
Despite the substantial media rights fees the NFL receives each year, reports indicate that the league retains the option to opt out of each deal after a seven-year period. Should the league choose to exercise this option, it would likely result in a further increase in revenue.
Furthermore, the current media deals could be structured in a manner where payments are back-loaded, leading to significant annual increases beyond the average yearly value. This would potentially boost the league’s earnings even if it decides not to opt out.