The Big Three Sports
of the NFL. According to the NFL web-site, in 2000 the NFL set the record for all-time paid attendance for the third year in succession, making over 20-million dollars for only the second time ever and with the addition of an expansion team in Huston where football is extremely popular, that number will surely rise. As reported in an article in BusinessWeek online by Tom Lowry entitled “The NFL Machine”, Lowry points out the NFL’s new 2 billion dollar satellite deal and the three years left on the 18 billion dollar network cable contract indicating the television interest in NFL games. The NFL has also received a 300 million dollar sponsorship from Coors. Overall, the NFL has doubled revenue over the past five years to a total of 4.8 billion dollars in 2002 (Lowry). This total is over a billion dollars higher than that of the MLB’ total revenue.
As for television and viewer interest, as stated in Lowry’s article, television ratings went up 5 percent in 2001, boasting an average of 15.8 million viewers a season (Lowry). In the 2003 playoffs the ratings went up another 5 percent from the increase in 2002 and in 2001, with ratings up 9 percent on CBS, FOX and ABC. According to Rudy Martzke of the USA Today, “CBS’ three playoff games have achieved the highest average for the AFC in seven years, a 19.3 rating” (Martzke). In 2002, the ratings for the main networks were as such: CBS, up 7 percent, Fox up 11 percent, ABC up 3 percent and ESPN up 24 percent (Martzke).
One of the main reasons for this increase in fan turnout and television ratings can be summed up by Steve Grubbs in Martzkes’ article, when he says, “There’s clearly more parity in the NFL. It’s more interesting when 90% of the teams still have a chance for the playoffs” and Tom DeCabia with, “The NFL is one of the best leagues in all of sports because, like they say, on any given Sunday most anyone can win” (Martzke). The NFL’s competition advantage over MLB and its excitement value over the NBA has lead to it being the most financially sound of the leagues as well as replacing MLB as Americas pastime. The interest level is high, the fans are excited and as Steve Cox says in an editorial on slate.msn.com web site, “NFL teams do not in fact move to cities with ‘bigger, richer fan bases’” (Greenberg 5). Summing up that there are no bad markets in football because no matter where a team moves, the city will and the club and the league will prosper.
To sum up the situation of economic status and pr/status of the NFL, I would say that it is going well and appears to have nowhere to go but up.
Sports require fans to go to games, require fans to tune into their televisions and require fans to buy their merchandise and with the case of the “big three” the excitement and entertainment value advantage lies [next page]