The NFL before the Spring Festival is undoubtedly the protagonist of North American sports.
Inside the venue, the American League final and the National League final came to an end, the Tigers and Rams after winning two games destined to go down in history, won the qualification for the 56th Super Bowl; off the court, "Tom Brady in the end to retire" can be called the world sports question, yesterday the media preemptively made a report on the decision of the 7-crown legendary quarterback, but he himself did not officially announce on his platform, this "retired Rashomon" can be described as the appetite of countless people.
But no matter which team laughs to the end, whether the most recognizable player in NFL history is saying goodbye to the game or not. One thing is for sure, at the end of the dramatic 2021-22 season, the NFL is destined to be the biggest winner, once again proving its position as the world's number one sports league.
Text / Fu Haonan
Editor / Yin Haonan
$1.8 billion – that's the revenue of Major League Soccer's 2021-22 season in sponsorship alone, the world's largest.
17.1 million passengers — That's the NFL's regular-season U.S. ratings per game, up 10 percent from the 2020-21 season and to a new high since the 2015-16 season. Compared with the average prime-time viewership of the NBC Tokyo Olympics of 15.5 million, it is nearly 2 million more.
NFL Media's regular season viewership data and the top ten games in the ratings are also listed
In addition, of the top 100 most watched TV shows in the United States in 2021, 91 are NFL games, and the top 16 are monopolized. By the playoffs, ratings have grown dramatically. None of the four games in the divisional finals had a rating of less than 30 million, and Bill's historic battle with the Chiefs had a rating of 42.74 million.
All kinds of data show that after withstanding the impact of the epidemic, the NFL's commercial value and revenue have ushered in a strong rebound, and it is still the undisputed leader in sports IP.
The Super Bowl showdown between the Rams and the Tigers will begin on Monday, February 14, Beijing time
01
Withstanding the severe challenges of the pandemic, the NFL has created one of the most exciting seasons in history
The "shrink season" has been the norm since the outbreak of the epidemic, and sports leagues around the world have more or less postponed or even cancelled the number of games in the past two years, and the NFL also cancelled preseason games last season.
However, this season's NFL schedule has not decreased, but has increased, and the league has announced that it will expand the regular season to 17 games and continue the system of 7 playoff teams last season.
Such a decision will naturally be controversial. With one more regular season game, the health risks of players will naturally be greater. After the first three weeks of last season, more than 20 starters from league teams were seriously injured for the season. And because of the unpredictability of the pandemic, more shows mean more operational risks.
Beal and the Chiefs' divisional final, the two sides scored 25 points against each other in the last 2 minutes of regular time Image source: B/R Gridiron
However, the excitement of the game is unpredictable: there are 34 games in the regular season, the highest in history. The 49-match winner was decided in the fourth quarter or in the last minute of extra time, the tie for the most in history. In every match between the division finals and the federation finals, the final score difference does not exceed one ball.
Every week, there will be unforgettable famous scenes. High-quality competitions will naturally cause traffic to rise in a straight line. It is worth mentioning that the Dallas Cowboys, known as the "Team of America" and ranked first in the world sports world in terms of market capitalization, have also brought huge benefits to the NFL this year due to their excellent record (12 wins and 5 losses in the regular season, the championship of the East Division), which has also brought huge benefits to the NFL: half of the top ten showdowns in the regular season ratings are cowboy games.
Huge television contracts are undoubtedly the NFL's largest source of revenue — more than 50 percent of the league's more than $15 billion in annual revenue comes from broadcast contracts. At the same time, rugby has always dominated American television. Among the 20 most watched programs in U.S. history, the previous Super Bowl events have occupied 19 of them, and the sky-high price of millions of ads in 30 seconds between games is also derived.
At the same time, the NFL's series of measures to prevent the epidemic also ensure that they can minimize the adjustment of the schedule and achieve the smooth progress of each game.
Although in the final weeks of the regular season, there were more than 100 players measuring the sun in a single day, the league adjusted its epidemic prevention policy to avoid the extreme situation of Brown, Washington and other teams losing the game due to too many player absences. This is nothing more than a reassurance for broadcasters and sponsors who have paid a huge price, so as to continue to donate generously to maintain cooperation with the NFL, which has both the quality and operational stability of copyrighted content.
02
The technology, gaming and alcohol industries account for the bulk of the sponsorship
As the sports betting industry has become widely legalized in the United States, partners such as bookmakers, Fantasia betting platforms and casinos have forged closer alliances with the NFL.
According to CNBC, the cumulative value of the 5-year agreement between DraftKings, FanDuel, Caissa Entertainment and other companies with the NFL in 2021 is close to $1 billion. To become a partner in the NFL, it's definitely expensive: Smaller agreements average at least $10 million a year, and companies with big capital backgrounds can pay an average of up to $200 million a year.
Compared with the emerging sports betting industry, the giants of the US technology industry have been more generous with the NFL: Verizon, the world's most valuable telecom company, previously paid the NFL about $300 million a year in sponsorship fees. They reached a new 10-year cooperation agreement with the NFL in September 2021, becoming their exclusive provider of 5G network technology. Verizon provides 5G-related technical services for NFL teams and stadiums, provides solutions for team communications, and enhances stadium operations and fan viewing experiences.
At the same time, Microsoft and Amazon are also partners of the NFL. The former pays an average of about $100 million a year in sponsorship fees to provide on-court tablets and playback technology equipment for the competition. The latter will become the exclusive broadcaster of the NFL's Thursday night game next season, broadcasting all Thursday night games on its streaming platform Prime Video and paying the NFL an average of about $1 billion a year.
It can be seen that the cooperation between the NFL and technology companies not only values their strong economic strength, but also takes into account the technical rights and interests they can bring, ensuring that the most advanced hardware and software resources are available at multiple levels such as event dissemination and event operation.
This is also the core concept of development that the league established in the last century: as early as the emergence of television as a new contemporary invention, the NFL has taken full advantage of this epoch-making communication technology to transform limited live event content into unlimited commercial value.