Hacker News Reader

Comment by simmanian | Hacker News Reader

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-nfl-made-13-billion-la...

This article says otherwise, but who knows, maybe it's wrong.

That article states that globally Soccer makes more money than the NFL. Just adding up the 5 Soccer leagues listed in the top 10 there, they total more than the NFL. And there are a bunch of soccer leagues globally that aren't in the top 10. So while the NFL does have a commanding lead as the largest sports league globally, American Football is indeed behind Soccer globally as a sport.

Another way of thinking about why that is is that the NFL is effectively a monopoly. They are the only game in town for a sport which is only popular in one country (the USA). Soccer is, globally, a much more popular sport than American Football, but it's not controlled by a single league (FIFA is a governing body (a terribly corrupt one, but that's a separate conversation), not a league).

If you look at it per-capita, the NFL also seems a bit less impressive, and their revenue might be more a result of the fact that the USA is both rich and fairly large than any strong indicator of global popularity. Taking population estimates from Wikipedia, the NFL made roughly $39.76/person in the USA, and the Premier League made roughly $80.30/person in the UK. (And that methodology is arguably a bit generous to the the NFL, since the Premier League is technically only in England, but I'm including the rest of the UK since they also do watch a lot of Soccer AFAIK.)

To me the enormous revenues of the NFL is a stronger indicator of why monopolies are harmful than of any special virtues of the NFL or American Football.

Also, nobody outside of USA actually likes American football as a sport. There is no global appeal to the sport.

Let us not forget Canada!

"I don't even know what street Canada is on."

-- Al Capone

Mostly true but you should then take college football revenue in the US into account.

Interesting point but I'm not sure I agree. There are other professional soccer leagues in the UK aside from the Premier League as well. It's not entirely apples-to-apples because the wider market structures are different between the US & UK, but I do think comparing the dominant player in each market is useful & instructive.

I think your point is totally fair though in that my description of NFL as a monopoly isn't as comprehensive as I expected. From what I can find, CFL revenues are about $213M , and US college football is $3.4 billion. CFL is pretty close to being a rounding error compared to the NFL, but college football is a definitely a significant presence. I think I'd say a market where one entrant commands almost 80% of the revenue is pretty close to being a functional monopoly, but not entirely, so I should have accounted for that.

And the CFL as well.

There's a massive difference between revenue and viewership. Also, these figures are a bit weird since they are just based on the "NFL" company, which is pretty much the ONLY provider of American Football in the world, this says a lot in itself. There is obviously much more money spent on Cricket and Soccer than on American Football totally.

Check out this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-watched_televisio...

NFL doesn't come anywhere near the amount of viewers for soccer or even cricket OR badminton.

BILLIONS of people watch the World Cup and Olympics, the super bowl attracts about 115M. The soccer world cup had 3.5 BILLION.

Do you really think more people spend money on the NFL than the total world spend on soccer?

  BILLIONS of people watch the World Cup and Olympics, the super bowl attracts about 115M

The Super Bowl is one event. World Cup is dozens of events. The Olympics are hundreds of events.

I don't know man?

I think this is just saying which league has the most revenue. I'd find it very difficult to believe that the number of people who played American Football professionally and recreationally was anywhere even close to the number of people who played soccer on this planet last year. I'd be pretty confident betting that the number of people who play basketball on this planet dwarfs the number of people who play American Football. (And the number of people with an interest in soccer or basketball on this planet definitely dwarfs the number of people interested in American Football.)

Maybe American Football can make a lot of money because it is in a rich market? Not really sure. But you can't really argue soccer and basketball as the global sports. It's not even close.

Add up all the “Association football” from here and it’s huge. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_....

Soccer is a much larger sport by revenue globally. It’s simply split into different nations + an international competition. The US is a single market so if you split things by country it tends to win.

PS: The World Cup is based on the best national teams vs using each individual team. Much like the US men’s basketball team at the Olympics vs NBA.

Yeah, I was talking about specific leagues, not sports entirely. My original post was misleading.

Tbh, when you said "biggest sports" I didn't think you were looking for "league with most revenue", might explain some of the reactions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com