The NFL has met its greatest broadcast rival, and it is NFL streaming.
Today, television data and analytics firm EDO released its third annual NFL TV Outcomes Report to ADWEEK with what’s become a foregone conclusion: NFL broadcasts are a far more effective tool for advertisers than anything on television. EDO estimates that the NFL brought in $5.2 billion annually in national TV ads and, during the 2024 season alone, hosted ads that were 19% more effective than the TV average during its regular season, 63% more effective during the playoffs, and 243% more compelling on Super Bowl Sunday.
The NFL’s 550 regular-season brand advertisers in 2024 would’ve needed to run 23 ads on television just to have the impact of one NFL ad.
But during the 2024-25 season, NFL streaming-exclusive games proved even stronger at the line of scrimmage for advertisers than the league’s already-dominant linear offerings. NFL ads running during those games were 66% more effective for brands than broadcast and cable offerings, with certain events providing even heavier hits.
“The NFL is so important to the TV ecosystem overall that it is, on average, more effective than all other types of advertising on TV,” said Kevin Krim, president and CEO of EDO. “The big push for the NFL has been to add streaming exclusives as a way to keep up with the evolution of where the audiences are going, which is to a streaming-first ecosystem.”
While Amazon Prime Video added a Wild Card playoff game to its Thursday Night Football slate last year, it was the second installment of its Black Friday game that proved extremely potent—with ads 51% more effective than those that ran during the NFL’s highly viewed Thanksgiving games. Over on Netflix, the NFL’s first Christmas Day games were 84% more effective for entertainment brands and 70% more so for pharmaceuticals than the average 2024 NFL broadcast.
Heading into the 2025 season, with a Week 1 game from Sao Paulo set for YouTube and an expanded partnership with ESPN holding additional potential, the EDO report suggests that brands can score big if they find the right fit with the league, its media partners, or even the right athlete endorsers.
“The NFL is the most sophisticated and the most effective in managing its media rights,” Krim said. “They’re the biggest, and yet they’re still setting the tone for every other league and every other live event.”