Cash Grows On Football Fields: How NFL Monetizes ‘Unique, Cultural” Sport In U.S.
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Story by Alan Snel Photos by Jeff Goulding
PHOENIX, Arizona — They’ve created an entertainment spectacle that transcends sports, throwing star football athletes, loud music and fans dropping 20 bucks a head into a adrenalin-juiced blender and creating a Super Bowl opening night event that jolted the big game vibe into motion at the Phoenix Suns arena Monday.
The National Football League has this Super Bowl stuff down.
From the looks of the size of the crowd inside Footprint Center, more than 10,000 fans shelled out $20 a piece to watch players from the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs play for the NFL championship at State Farm Stadium in metro Phoenix Sunday.
“It’s become a whole week and a spectacle,” said Connor Embree, the Chiefs wide receiver coach. “And people talk about making the Monday after the Super Bowl a national holiday. It brings people together from all walks of life. You invite your neighbors.”
The NFL has monetized its product as well as any league in the United States, generating more than $17 billion in annual revenues thanks to billion-dollar media rights deals and the highest-rated TV programs.
And more cash tonight. Ten thousand fans times $20 a person meant an easy $200,000 in revenues.
Chiefs linebacker Jack Cochrane, a pre-law major at South Dakota, explained the Super Bowl has become a “unique cultural thing about the United States. It’s culturally engrained in our country. It’s the pinnacle of sports in this country and this country is passionate about sports.”
The teams’ starting quarterbacks — the Eagles’ Jalen Hurts and the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes — entertained questions from NFL Network/ex-player Michael Irvin.
Mahomes put his job in perspective with a simple-stated sentence: “I come to work and give everything I have.”
The Chiefs strength and conditioning coach, Barry Rubin, said he recalled when baseball and football were equally popular in the United States.
Not anymore.
“Back when the Super Bowl started, football and baseball were even. But now football is America’s sport,” said Rubin, who is from Monroe, Louisiana.
