By JULIA STUMBAUGH
The NFL distributed approximately $400 million to each team after accruing around $13 billion in media, sponsorship and royalty revenue during the 2023 season, according to Sportico’s Kurt Badenhausen.
Some team payouts totaled as much as $425 million, according to Badenhausen.
These payouts, each of which almost doubled the 2023 salary cap, increased by between six percent and eight percent over what teams received following the 2022 season, Badenhausen reported.
The money came from “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,” according to Badenhausen.
NFL teams were worth an average of $5.1 billion each heading into the 2023 season, Mike Ozanian and Justin Teitelbaum reported for Forbes last year.
That was more than the average valuation the Forbes reporters found in their most recent valuations of NBA teams ($3.85 billion each) or MLB teams ($2.4 billion each.)
Part of the reason for those higher valuations is the NFL’s hard salary cap, which despite shooting up to $255.4 million next season still limits what owners must spend on payroll for a competitive team, Badenhausen noted.
Badenhausen reported that another reason for the NFL’s high valuation is this annual distribution of revenue.
After the NFL agreed to an 11-year media rights deal worth more than $100 billion in 2021, team payouts are set to rise to more than $800 million per franchise by 2034, Badenhousen reported.
The NFL’s payout revenue will also continue to be bolstered by several companies who have served as consistent league-level sponsors for more than a decade, including Gatorade, Pepsi, Bud Light, Verizon, Visa and Subway, according to MarketCast and Sports Business Journal.