Tackling growth
The biggest obstacle to the NFL seeking a larger audience is that, at least in the U.S., there is no audience larger than the NFL’s.
“Our fan base has been surging now for several years, and what’s exciting is that what’s driving that growth is women, young people, and Latinos,” said NFL CMO Tim Ellis. “Those are the three demographic segments that we have been targeting consistently for the last several years, so the bottom line is that the strategy is working.”
According to Nielsen Live+7 ratings, the NFL accounted for 14 of the top 15 broadcasts last year and nearly half of the Top 100. Narrow that focus to same-day ratings, and only the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and a State of the Union address join the NFL among the year’s Top 50 broadcasts. Among sports broadcasts, the 19.07 million viewers who tuned in for the Ohio State-Michigan game in November—the most-watched non-NFL sports broadcast of the year—wouldn’t have cracked the Top 50 NFL airings.
Last season’s NFL playoffs averaged 38.5 million viewers per game and were the most-watched on record. The 123.4 million people who watched Super Bowl 58 across multiple platforms were the biggest U.S. television audience since an average of 150 million people watched the first moon landing in 1969.
Globally, 62.5 million people outside the U.S. watched the most recent Super Bowl, up 10% from a year earlier. In Mexico, where the audience of 8.7% was a 5% increase from a year earlier, YouGov found that the NFL was the most popular U.S. league (among 32%), just ahead of the NBA (30%). In the U.K., where 1.2 million Super Bowl viewers was an 18% jump from 2023, YouGov noted that the 9% who called the NFL their favorite U.S. league nearly doubled the second-place NBA (5%).
The kickoff campaign, in multiple ways, builds from that momentum.