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The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/Mr_YUP on 2024-04-07 20:30:53.
I was wondering what the cost per viewer is for an NFL broadcast so I did some napkin math.
The per year costs for NFL broadcast break down just for the rights to show the game on their channel.
So that’s about $13.3B per year in total just to broadcast the games. If you take the number of games in a regular season game and divide the total yearly revenue it’s about $50m per game.
So with $48.9m per game and the average viewership is 17.9m that’s $2.73 per person just for the rights to broadcast the game.
I find it interesting that if you were to try to get exclusive rights to broadcast an NFL game you’d probably need $75m per game just for the regular season. So probably about $20.4b just to get an email read. I’d imagine something closer to $25-30b a year would be where they’d start talks. This is also exclusively for regular season games. This is not to take into account playoffs or the Super Bowl which rotates around to each of the networks.
I can’t see the NFL going to an exclusive model because that actually would severely limit their market. If someone like Apple came along and plopped down $30-35b for the rights I don’t know if the NFL would take it. I am unsure if the audience would follow or if it would help maintain the NFL’s dominance. Sports seems to be one of the last things keeping traditional broadcasters alive and the NFL must be one of the only things keeping them alive.
There are some generous roundings here with this and the published numbers may include rights for playoffs and Super Bowls.
TL;DR You’re worth about $2.73 per game for the rights to broadcast it if you watch every game in a single season.