Each of the 32 NFL teams received just over $400 million from the league office for the 2023 season, according to multiple people familiar with the league’s finances who were not authorized to speak publicly. The tally is up 6% to 8% from the 2022 season, depending on the accounting used by the team.
The total represents national media rights, league sponsorships and shared revenue and royalties from the league’s various affiliates and subsidiaries, such as NFL Properties, NFL International and NFL Enterprises and adds up to roughly $13 billion.
Representatives from the NFL declined to comment.
The NFL’s economic model is the envy of every other major sports league, thanks to two main principles. The system benefits from a relatively hard salary cap that restricts owners from NBA-like spending that triggers luxury tax penalties. In 2023, the NFL salary cap was $224.8 million, with each club also on the hook for nine-figures worth of player benefits, stadium costs and team expenses,
The other huge plus is the guaranteed check from the league each year that dwarfs the cap before a team sells a single ticket, beer, sponsorship or parking space. The result is that every NFL team is wildly profitable and worth at least $4 billion, with an average franchise value of $5.14 billion last year.
The league’s media rights contracts with ESPN, Fox, CBS, NBC, Amazon and YouTube represent the bulk of the equally shared revenue. Last season kicked off the latest round of deals that are worth at least $125 billion over 11 years.
The NFL also had more than three dozen league sponsors in 2023. Many of these brands have been partners for multiple decades, including Gatorade, Visa, Campbell Soup and FedEx, while Oakley and Lowe’s both signed extensions to their deals last year.
The national payout is up 115% over the past decade and should rise at a similar rate over the next decade to more than $800 million per team with the media deals secured.
Teams receive an additional payout from the league for shared gate receipts, which calls for 34% of each team's ticket revenue to go toward a general pool to be shared equally. It represents another $20 million-plus per team. Including the gate receipts, equally shared revenue represented 68% of the $20 billion the 32 teams generated in 2023.
The Green Bay Packers release their annual report each year, and it offer a window each year into NFL finances, including the national revenue figure. But teams book national revenue at differing amounts on their income statements. Sportico spoke to four teams regarding their 2023 national revenue, and they had four different figures: $402 million, $404 million, $418 million and $425 million.
Timing of payments and deductions for expenses impact the posted figure for each team. Another minor variance is for teams that appear on preseason games on national TV or radio. Those clubs get a small bump as a kind of make-good on lost local media revenue. Teams control those media rights and can generate advertising from them, but some fans will skip the local feed for the national one, impacting the value of the game.
