SBJ Unpacks: The NFL's midseason report card

O n Oct. 15, the NFL tweaked its Week 8 schedule, installing a Washington Commanders-Chicago Bears matchup in the more valuable 4:25 p.m. ET window instead of the originally scheduled Philadelphia Eagles-Cincinnati Bengals game. The idea was to give a bigger platform to the Commanders-Bears game, which featured two long-struggling but resurgent big-market teams that employ this year’s first two draft picks as their starting quarterbacks.

It couldn’t have worked out any better. The game ended on a remarkable 52-yard Hail Mary touchdown from Jayden Daniels to Noah Brown that gave the home Commanders a critical win in front of a euphoric Northwest Stadium crowd of 64,704. But more importantly for the NFL, the game window (combined with Chiefs-Raiders) drew an audience of 24.9 million viewers on CBS, the fourth-highest viewed window of the year so far.

The scenario was a microcosm for the NFL’s rich-get-richer 2024 season, in which the league has continued to show gains in every important metric, even when it seems mathematically difficult to grow. Its average TV audience is on pace to hit a nine-year high, defying history by not declining — up around 1% to 17.4 million — during a presidential campaign, as happened in 2016 and 2020. Through Week 8, the league and its 32 clubs have sold 98.7% of all tickets available (last year’s full-season figure was 98.6%).

Raw ticket sales don’t tell the whole story, though. In an era marked by profound inflationary pressures on household budgets, the data indicates that NFL ticket buyers appear to be unfazed by the same in sports. 

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On the secondary markets, NFL ticket prices are up 13% compared to 2023 and 28% since 2021, according to data compiled by Eventellect, which helps teams manage and market single-game tickets.

Twenty out of 32 teams are seeing their highest secondary market prices ever, though specifics weren’t available.

“It’s no surprise that the NFL has seen revenue growth since we emerged from the pandemic in 2020,” said Kate Howard, chief commercial officer at Eventellect and a former NFL vice president. “However, the fact that demand [which translates to higher secondary market pricing] in the NFL continues to steadily climb year after year is exciting.”

The top five teams in secondary market pricing growth since 2021 are the Bengals, Bills, Dolphins, Lions and Texans, Eventellect said. 

Bobby Gallo, senior vice president of club business development at the NFL, said the league continues to benefit from an industrywide, post-pandemic increase in demand for live event entertainment. But, he said, teams have also become much better at targeting likely buyers of single-game tickets and finding ways to keep season-ticket buyers in the fold.

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“It’s both high demand and interest, and teams leaning in, becoming more sophisticated, using more tools, leveraging data more, to help grow our business and help fill our stadiums,” Gallo said.

The league also hit a high-water mark for season-ticket renewal rates last offseason, and the total number of season-ticket holders is up for the fourth straight year, Gallo said. Units sold and revenue on suites will also be up this year, Gallo said.

Moving the Washington-Chicago game was not exactly a cutting-edge tactic. It’s been within the league’s power to change games from the early Sunday afternoon window to the late window, or vice versa, for many years. But more recent changes have allowed flexing into prime-time windows. Also, since the new media rights deals came into force in 2023, conferences are no longer affiliated with CBS or Fox, making every game available to schedule makers. (With two NFC teams matching up, Commanders-Bears would have been a Fox game under the old deals, and Fox only had a single-header that day.)

“The flexibility we now have to make the puzzle work on Sunday afternoons, but also get the matchups across the prime-time and national windows, is delivering for our fans and all of our partners,” said Hans Schroeder, NFL executive vice president of media distribution. 

On the field, scoring is up again this year after a decline. There have been 45.3 points per game, the highest through Week 8 since games averaged 47 points at the same time in 2021. (Scoring declined to 43.7 points in each of ’22 and ’23.) While NFL experts believe there is such a thing as too much scoring, the decline had been concerning to a marketing machine that likes to sell quarterbacks and wide receivers. 

Also, 54% of all games so far have been decided by seven points or fewer, the most at this point in league history.  

“We’re really excited,” Schroeder said. “And ultimately, it’s about the game. The game continues to shine, there are a ton of great storylines.”

To be clear, a 1% year-over-year gain in television audience still paints a somewhat nuanced picture. Nielsen’s inclusion of out-of-home viewership starting in 2020 makes comparisons to prior presidential election years difficult, and one key network (ESPN) is still down. But the NFL’s dominance of the airwaves is unchallenged, and avoiding a year-over-year decline helps maintain the narrative of strength.

By percentage growth, Fox is seeing the biggest gain, up 8% for its Sunday NFL games, which are averaging 18.6 million viewers. CBS is averaging 18.5 million viewers through Week 8, up 1% season-to-date, while Prime Video is averaging just under 13.2 million viewers, up 4% to date. Schroeder said the league is particularly encouraged to see this number approach the viewership of “Thursday Night Football” when it was on broadcast. 

NBC’s package of NFL games is averaging 22.4 million viewers, up 1% to date. 

ESPN/ESPN2/ABC is down 12% for “Monday Night Football” through Week 8. “Monday Night Football” is likely to improve in the second half of the year, in no small part due to the league and Disney adding more ABC broadcast network simulcasts to the schedule. That has upset the other partners, but it will lead to better numbers for MNF. 

The fact that Chicago-Washington was even in the conversation for an enhanced platform is a win. Since the Bears made the 2010 NFC Championship game, those two teams have combined for zero playoff wins and just five winning seasons. They’ve long been known as underperforming franchises as businesses as well, but competitive relevance — perhaps boosted by those quarterbacks, Washington’s Daniels and Caleb Williams of Chicago — will solve that in the short term.

In fact, Washington’s resurgence (and the 2023 acquisition of the team by Josh Harris, finally removing the deeply unpopular Dan Snyder from ownership) has eliminated one of the last weak spots in attendance. Three years ago, the Washington Football Team and the Detroit Lions were the only teams to fill less than 80% of their seats. Since then, both have seen dramatic improvement. The Commanders averaged 52,751 fans per game in 2021 but were at 62,239 fans per game this year. The Lions averaged 51,522 in 2021; through Week 8 this year they are averaging 65,416.

All of these green flags around the NFL’s business and fan interest come just three years after the league expanded the season from 16 to 17 games, a 6% increase in inventory that has apparently not yet met the country’s persistent demand for football.

“There’s no evidence that there’s not enough demand; if anything, there’s more demand, but definitely adding that inventory has been great for us,” Gallo said.

The next NFLPA union contract negotiations are sure to center on the league’s desire to go up again, to 18 games. It will prove yet another test — and an opportunity — for the league that keeps growing to find even greater success. 

SBJ’s Austin Karp contributed to this report.

Cosm and Dan Gilbert’s real estate firm Bedrock today announced plans to bring one of Cosm’s shared reality venues to downtown Detroit, the immersive technology company’s fourth such facility in the U.S.

Similar in size to existing venues in Los Angeles and north Dallas (and another planned for Atlanta), Cosm Detroit will sit in the city’s “Development at Cadillac Square,” a 1.5-million-square-foot mixed-use district adjacent to Campus Martius that Bedrock will break ground on in 2025.

“Once we got our feet on the ground and really dug into the DNA of the city, it’s hard to not to fall in love with it,” Cosm President and CEO Jeb Terry told SBJ in a recent interview. “You look at the broader demographic data – Detroit is a large city. A lot of people don’t understand the scope and scale of the demographic. And then the fandom there is hardcore.”

Gilbert participated in a more than $250M funding round Cosm closed this summer, which valued the company at over $1B.

“[Cosm’s] revolutionary technology complements Detroit’s entertainment offerings,” Bedrock CEO Kofi Bonner wrote to SBJ in an email. “Cosm will become a staple of the entertainment offerings downtown and will further enliven the city and augment the vibrancy of the area, and we can’t wait for everyone to experience it firsthand.”

Terry cited Detroit’s four professional sports teams, college sports interest and midwestern location as reasons he is bullish on the market for a Cosm venue. This is also Cosm’s first location in a state with legalized sports betting, which Terry said could lead to unique partnerships and content opportunities.

“We’re excited about going into that opportunity and working with partners to make sure it’s a great place for fans to ‘game,’ so to speak,” Terry said, adding Cosm’s back-end software can be used to integrate data into its dome and hall displays. “We will never be the [sportsbook]. That is not our business. But we will partner with those that want to lean in and take advantage of our space.”

The company’s rights portfolio includes leaguewide deals with the NBA, NFL and UFC, plus arrangements with ESPN, NBC Sports, Fox Sports and TNT Sports, allowing them to show sports ranging from basketball, baseball and American football to Premier League soccer.

Detroit-based Rossetti is architecting Cosm Detroit, while Gensler is designing the venue in Atlanta’s Centennial Yards mixed-use district. HKS did the facilities in LA’s Hollywood Park and north Dallas’ Grandscape.

Financial terms of the Detroit project were not disclosed, but Terry said that, similar to Cosm’s other locations, there is “a lot of term” on its lease with Bedrock. Bedrock is also planning a multi-level market hall on the Cadillac Square development site.

“Our goal is to continue to help be the heartbeat of downtown, just like we say we’re the heartbeat of Hollywood Park or Grandscape,” Terry said. “The always-on, 24/7 action, that’s our goal, as you’re looking to make downtown more walkable, more 24/7, more mixed-use.” 

Every private equity investment in an NFL team starts with an upfront $500,000 fee to the league itself, sources tell me and my colleague Chris Smith. It could be just the beginning of the NFL’s profit sharing, which also seems likely to include a percentage of a fund’s return on a team investment upon exit (however, we are still hearing considerable uncertainty on how that gets structured).

The $500,000 is described not as a profit but as a “payment” to cover expenses related to performing due diligence on the funds and their investors, as well as details related to the terms and structures of individual deals. Sources say this is not unreasonable on its face, considering the laborious legal and financial work that’s gone into creating the NFL PE investment policy. But it serves a political purpose, too -- however small, it’s a sweetener for owners who have no intention of tapping PE.

It’s also a vivid illustration the NFL’s leverage.

Onstage at SBJ's Dealmakers conference this week in D.C., Ares Management Partner Mark Affolter gave a fascinating answer about the NFL’s desirability (and by extension, its leverage.) He actually mentioned the NFL’s stability first, not its future growth prospects.

“We're very focused on downside protection and value that, sometimes over, more, say high octane growth types of opportunities,” he said. While not dismissing the growth potential as the league looks overseas and strategizes around a longer season and new media deals, he said: “You can almost look at an NFL team and with a high degree of certainty, be able to predict what its cash flow and EBITDA is going to look like five, six, seven years down the road,” he said.

Incidentally, there’s growing pessimism about any PE deals getting done this calendar year, lending weight to Chiefs owner and finance committee chair Clark Hunt’s cautionary comments at the Oct. 15 league meeting. The contracts formally approving Sixth Street, Ares Management, Arctos Partners and the consortium of Blackstone, Carlyle, CVC, Dynasty Equity and Ludis are still not done.

The next NFL league meeting is set for Dec. 10-11 in Dallas. If not done there, most expect any PE deals to be ready for the league’s big offseason annual meeting in March.