NFL banks ‘$13BILLION in media fees, sponsorships, and royalties

The NFL earned a collective $13 billion in media fees, sponsorships, shared revenue and royalties from league subsidiaries, according to Sportico, which reports that each club will receive just over $400 million from the commissioner’s office for the 2023 season.

That figure represents between a 6- and 8-percent uptick for the NFL. Remarkably, the $404 million NFL teams received from the league for the 2023 season does not include any ticket sales, team sponsorships, concession sales or parking fees.

The league has declined to comment on the reporting by Sportico, which releases the league’s annual profits from the preceding season each July. Sportico’s reporting has been corroborated by the Green Bay Packers‘ annual reports.

The Packers are a publicly held nonprofit, making the storied team the only major American sports franchise to release a public balance sheet every year.

Although the Packers have yet to release their annual report for 2023, the team’s previous reports have shown a steady rise in league profits from $180 million per team in 2012 to $374 million in 2022, the bulk of which comes from the NFL’s lucrative media deal.

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The latest media contract will last 11 years and is worth at least $125 billion to the NFL and its teams.

If revenue continues to rise at its current rate, as expected, clubs will be making $800 million in media fees, sponsorships, shared revenue and royalties one decade from now, according to Sportico.

Sportico also writes that league profits were buoyed by more than three dozen NFL sponsorships in 2023, including Gatorade, Visa, Campbell Soup and FedEx

As a result of these record-breaking profits over the last decade or so, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was rewarded with a contract extension in October that will keep him in office into 2027.

The 64-year-old Commissioner was paid about $64 million in 2019-20 and 2020-21, according to the New York Times.