How NFL Teams and Owners Made $23.5 Billion Last Year

The NFL season kicks off this year with teams in all but a handful of franchises seeing a path to the playoffs. Add in the allure of gambling and fantasy football, and it’s no wonder that football is Americans’ favorite sport to watch at 31%, roughly three times basketball (11%), baseball (10%) and soccer (9%), per Gallup’s latest survey.

All those eyeballs mean money—lots and lots of money.

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The Premier League has the biggest global reach of any sports league, and MLB’s origins date back 150 years, but the NFL is the undisputed king at making a buck.

The NFL’s 32 teams generated an estimated $23.5 billion last year, up 6% from 2024, and total NFL revenue topped $24 billion, as some revenue stays at the league level. It is well ahead of the pace needed to meet commissioner Roger Goodell’s 2010 revenue target of $25 billion by 2027—which raised eyebrows at the time, when league revenues were $8 billion.

The 2025 tally is 79% higher than MLB—the gap was 29% 20 years ago. The Premier League only has 20 teams, but its $9.2 billion for the 2024-25 season is more akin to the NHL ($7.7 billion) than American football. NBA teams made an estimated $12.25 billion during the 2024-25 season, ahead of the league’s new 11-year, $76 billion media deal kicking off.

Teams in these leagues all generate revenue the same way: from gate receipts, sponsorships, concessions, merchandise, luxury suites, media contracts and other events at their venues, such as concerts. But the scale of the revenue streams varies wildly in the different sports.

The average NFL franchise is worth $9.34 billion, per Sportico‘s NFL team valuations. That figure is up 31% over 2025 and triple the average from six years ago. The league’s evenly distributed central revenue means every team is worth at least $7.4 billion. There are only six non-NFL sports franchises in the world worth more than the 32nd-ranked Cincinnati Bengals.

In 2025, NFL teams received $14.5 billion, or just over $450 million apiece, from leaguewide media, sponsorship, licensing and merchandise deals, which represented 62% of total team revenues. The Dallas Cowboys and Los Angeles Rams were the only franchise to generate more from local revenue than national distributions.

TV is the driving force of the league’s distribution, rising 5% in 2025 and being on track for a 6% gain this year. The current TV contracts are worth $12 billion a year on average, and owners are expected to opt out of the deals in 2029 after seeing how much ESPN, NBC and Amazon committed to the NBA.

NFL games represented 83 of the 100 most-watched TV broadcasts in 2025. Yet, the NBA’s new TV pacts have NBC and Amazon paying more annually for their basketball package than for football, and ESPN almost at par.

The NBA’s new TV deals will move it closer to the NFL model, with central revenue a larger piece of the pie. For the 2024-25 season, the NBA’s national revenue represented an estimated 38% of team revenue. MLB, where franchise value gains have severely lagged the NFL and NBA, also wants to centralize more rights, particularly with media. Its league distribution was 25% of team revenue in 2025.

Tickets and luxury suites are the next largest revenue bucket for NFL teams at $4.35 billion, or 19% of the total pie. Demand continues to outstrip supply for NFL tickets, with each team hosting only 10 home games per year, including preseason, and almost every stadium at or near capacity.

The San Francisco 49ers, which include certain concessions and nonalcoholic beverages with season tickets, have led the NFL in the league in recent years. The total was $176 million in 2024 after local taxes but before the visiting teams’ share (VTS)—NFL bylaws require teams to share 34% of ticket revenue with other clubs; 2025 data was not available. They were followed by the Cowboys ($136 million), Philadelphia Eagles ($130 million), Denver Broncos ($129 million) and Miami Dolphins ($127 million).

The Tennessee Titans ($81 million), Indianapolis Colts ($83.3 million) and Arizona Cardinals ($83.4 million) ranked at the bottom in 2024. The Eagles ranked third in 2024 net gate receipts despite losing a home game when they “hosted” the Packers in Brazil. The money from international games and the NFL playoffs flows back to teams through the central revenue distribution.

Included in the $4.35 billion ticket revenue is the NFL’s shared gate receipt system, VTS. It was $29 million per team in 2025 from regular season and preseason games.

The Cowboys had the highest luxury suite revenue at roughly $135 million. The appetite for premium experiences has exploded at sports stadiums and is a priority for new buildings opening in Buffalo, Cleveland, Tennessee and Washington, D.C.

Team sponsorship revenue was an estimated $2.6 billion last year, or 10% of the league total. Dallas led the way again at $300 million, while the Rams, Atlanta Falcons, Las Vegas Raiders and New England Patriots all earned more than $100 million from sponsors. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was the driving force in revolutionizing team sponsorships after he bought the team in 1989 for $150 million. He pushed for teams to gain control of more inventory and opportunities that were previously restricted by league rules.

Stadium naming rights are the biggest sponsorship asset but represent only 10% of total sponsorship revenue, by Sportico‘s count. The Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs are the only teams that play in stadiums without corporate names.

Revenue from concessions, parking, team stores and non-NFL events was $1.7 billion, or 7% of total revenue. Event revenue, such as concerts, peaked in 2023 when Taylor Swift performed all 53 of her U.S. shows in NFL stadiums. Swift kept almost all ticket revenue, with teams entitled to a small cut or rental fee for their venue. Yet, teams cashed in with concessions, parking and merchandise at the sold-out events, as well as from hefty premium seating demand. In 2024, she performed nine shows at NFL venues in Indianapolis, Miami and New Orleans.

NFL stadiums hosted Club World Cup games in 2025 and World Cup games in 2026. Revenues from those events flowed almost entirely to FIFA.

And while the NBA, NHL and MLB fret about their local TV revenue with the ongoing messiness in the RSN business, the NFL emerges unscathed there, as well. Almost all the TV inventory is controlled at the league level, and the only local media rights are from radio and preseason games. Local media represented less than 2% of overall revenue, versus a recently reduced 17% for MLB; It was 21% in 2023.

In addition to the highest revenue in sports, NFL owners benefit from a relatively hard salary cap that was $279 million last year. Each team was also on the hook for $74 million in benefits payments, but the combined outlay is still $100 million short of the $453 million check from the league before teams sold a ticket, sponsorship or beer.

The result: an average profit of $127 million, based on earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The range was an estimated $51 million for the Broncos, which were saddled with high one-year cash player costs in 2025, to $510 million for the Cowboys.

By contrast, the 20 EPL clubs lost more than $1 billion overall during the 2024-25 season, and 12 of them lost more than $50 million after player trading and excluding asset sales. In April, Chelsea reported a loss of £264 million ($356 million based on current exchange rates). It was a record pre-tax loss for an EPL team.

(This story was first published on Aug. 29, 2024, and it has been updated on Sept. 11, 2026.)

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