Will Any Other Sports Ever Rival the Popularity of the NFL?

When it comes to sports in North America, no league is more popular than the NFL. Heck, no league even comes kind of close.

Sure, Major League Baseball is considered America’s pastime. And yes, both college football as well as the National Basketball Association have touted themselves as rivals to the National Football League. In reality, though, no other sport in the United States comes close to rivaling the popularity and revenue of American Football.

Some have wondered whether soccer can give the NFL a run for its money over the long term. After all, many continue to consider it the most popular sport on a global scale. But while Americans are consuming more soccer, as evidenced in the massive rise of online MLS betting, it still doesn’t hold a candle to the NFL’s model. Perhaps that will change one day. More international stars have started taking notice of Major League Soccer, even though it’s not yet portrayed as one of the world’s elite leagues.

All of which raises an interesting question: Just how large is the NFL’s lead over every other sport? What contributes to this advantage? And, of course, will things ever change?

 The NFL May Be the Most Popular Sport in the World

In terms of raw popularity, soccer may still beat out the NFL on the international scene. The NFL has tried expanding its global reach by playing games in other countries. But there are a cornucopia of elite-level soccer leagues around the world. The same cannot be said about football as a sport.

Even so, the NFL is the most lucrative sport in the world—bar none.

According to Visual Capitalist, nine of the 15 most valuable sports franchises in the world come from the NFL. No other league has more than three (NBA). And only three soccer clubs appear on the list at all: Real Madrid (Spanish La Liga) and Manchester United (English Premier League).

Granted, franchise valuations are not the sole measurement of popularity. And when traveling abroad, soccer matches tend to have larger crowds, on average, than NFL games.

Isolate sporting events in the United States, though, and it isn’t even close.

We do not yet have data on the 2024 NFL regular season, as it is still going on. But in 2023, the average attendance for an NFL game checked in at 69,389 people, according to a study conducted by FiveThirtyEight. The next closest league is Major League Baseball. Their average attendance in 2023? That would be 26,808—nearly 62 percent less than that of the NFL.

Indeed, stadium sizes contribute to this difference. But even when adjusting for full capacity averages, the NFL continues to tower over every other league in North America.

Scarcity of Product Helps Drive The NFL’s Ubiquity

Plenty of people have attempted to boil down the NFL’s popularity to a singular driving force. That is tough. No one factor drives its success in its entirety. There are a multitude of forces at play.

However, in the United States specifically, a scarcity of product helps the NFL lord over everyone else. The regular season is 17 games long. That means, each week, every team is playing out nearly 6 percent of its schedule. This inherently raises the stakes of every single contest. It also helps pave the way for the Any Given Sunday Paradox: that any team can beat any other team at any given point.

Shorter seasons—and single-elimination playoff formats—also give way to more parity. One hot streak over the course of four to six weeks can turn a rebuilding team into a Super Bowl contender. And looking at the playoffs alone, underdogs have an easier time of making deep postseason pushes when everything is one-and-done. Basically, the entire NFL season is virtually an extension of March Madness in college basketball. People appreciate the unpredictability inherent of the model—and how difficult it is to become a Super Bowl champion with staying power.

What’s more, fewer games each week also gives fans and analysts more time to digest the game and educate themselves about it. The same goes for the length of time between plays (i.e. downs) during games. Analysts have more time to, well, analyze. And by extension, fans can gain a higher understanding of the game and its nuances. That connectivity breeds further interest and foments loyalty.

Will Any Other League Ever Match or Exceed the NFL’s Popularity?

At this exact moment, the answer to this question seems like a resounding “heck no.”

No other major sports league is positioned to replicate the NFL’s model. Their seasons are just too long. NHL and NBA teams play out 82 games followed by best-of-seven series in every playoff round. And while Major League Baseball’s playoffs are slightly less predictable, their 162-game regular season is a slog. Scarcity of product is not something any of these leagues can or will ever tout.

The outlook for “rivals” is particularly arduous when you consider the NFL isn’t exactly teeming with superstar talent these days. At the most basic level, there were more recognizable quarterbacks a decade or so ago. Nowadays, the quality of talent at the QB1 slot isn’t nearly as deep. Ask yourself this, while being brutally honest: Aside from Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs and Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens, how many current NFL quarterbacks would you recognize if you saw them walking down the street?

And yet, the NFL is still annihilating every other sport by any reasonable popularity metric. The product, and the support behind it, is in so many ways made of Teflon.

This is not to say the dynamic will not change. Additional studies on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) could culminate in fewer athletes participating in football at the grassroots level. This, by extension, could winnow down the number and quality of talents who ultimately enter the NFL. And if that happens, it would open the door for another sport/league to overtake American football’s ubiquity.

Insofar as this transition is possible, though, it is not on the event horizon. Even if the NFL is not the world’s most popular league, it remains and will continue to remain the face of American sports for the foreseeable future.