The National Football League (NFL) and its players should take pride in how they benefit the country’s economy. US economists should be incredibly grateful to the players that pushed the ending to the league’s four month lockout as apart from pleasing its fans, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune, they “also saved the most profitable sport in America, the most popular show on TV and billions of dollars that would have disappeared from the economy.”
Even when it’s not football season, the NFL rakes in close to $10bn. And just profits from sponsorship this year are now expected to increase by 15 percent from last year’s figures. More than 100,000 jobs are supported throughout NFL cities (including hoteliers and their staff, as well as sports-bar owners and all of their employees). So all in all, according to an analysis from Edgeworth Economics, when looking at these NFL cities, these games are adding approximately $5bn.
And then there are of course the TV viewers, boosting the economy as well. The Super Bowl last year on Fox TV, attracted a staggering 111 million viewers which, according to Nielsen’s list of top 10 programs, amounts to “more than any other single telecast.”
