NFL Revenue Sharing 101

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January 23, 2020

By Noonefromtampa

Many people have questions as to how revenue is divided up among the various NFL teams, so I wanted to provide a general overview on the subject from publicly available sources and estimates made by industry followers. The NFL does not make detailed financial information available.

NFL revenue is split into two major categories: national revenue and local revenue.

National revenue, which is shared across all 32 teams, consists of:

  • TV deals with the various networks
  • NFL Ventures:
    • Merchandising; Fanatics is the lead NFL partner on this
  • NFL Enterprise:
    • NFL Network, NFL.com and NFL Sunday Ticket
    • Licensing deals, such as “official sponsors of the NFL”
    • Ticket sales (40% of gross)

Local revenue, which goes to the local team, consists of:

  • Ticket sales (60% of gross)
  • Concessions and parking, which are split between the team and stadium ownership
  • Corporate sponsorships with the local team

Tickets sales are split between the home team, which gets 60% of the gate, with the remaining 40% going into a shared pool that is split across all teams. This helps negates the impact of poor attendance on individual teams, such as the Redskins.

2018 Estimate of Shared Revenue Sources

Category Amount
TV Deals $5.1B
NFL Ventures $1.4B
NFL Enterprise $2.3B
Ticket Sales $330M

We know from the 2018 Green Bay Packers’ financial report that the league provided $274.3M in shared revenue per team. Multiplying that amount by 32 teams yields a net total shared revenue pool of $8.8B. The estimate of shared revenue from various sources is around $9.1B, so the difference between the two values means that league expenses are around $300M.

While every team gets an equal of the national revenue, the local revenue can vary greatly based on the size and type of the stadium, ticket sales, how much of the concession/parking revenue the team gets and the value of the team’s corporate sponsorships. In 2018, the Packers had $203.7M in local revenue for a total revenue of $489M. Economic experts who track sports league finances have estimated some teams  have much higher total revenues than the Packers.

Some total revenue estimates for 2018 for the top revenue teams:

  • Dallas Cowboys – $950M
  • New England Patriots – $600M
  • New York Giants – $520M
  • Houston Texans – $500M
  • Washington Redskins – $495M
  • San Francisco 49ers – $495M

So, the better a team does at generating local revenue, the more money goes into the team’s pockets.