Average per game TV viewership of NFL games in the United States 2010-2023

The NFL is one of the most widely televised sporting leagues in the world. The average television viewership of a regular season NFL game in 2023 was calculated to be 17.9 million.

Attendance

In addition to this record-breaking TV viewership, the NFL attracts thousands of fans to the stadiums each week to see their favorite teams in action. The NFL has consistently been the major American sports league with the highest average attendance, with an average of almost 70 thousand people attending each game in the 2022 season. Moreover, during the 2022 regular season, the average total home attendance per team across the entire NFL was calculated to be 588,088. The franchise with the highest total attendance for its eight regular-season home games was the Dallas Cowboys, perhaps in part to their reasonably priced tickets, costing only 99.50 U.S. dollars on average, just less than the average ticket price across the NFL at 107.05 U.S. dollars per ticket. The attendance at NFL matches exhibited a significant reduction in 2020 when many games were forced behind closed doors as a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. However, a year later, the total attendance at NFL games reached a record high of 18.29 million fans across the regular season in 2021, indicating that the popularity of attending games did not wain throughout period of reduced attendances as a result of health measures.

Best players

Since 1957, the Associated Press NFL Most Valuable Player Award has been given to the NFL player considered to have been the most outstanding during the season. Since the award's introduction, Peyton Manning has received the award the greatest number of times during his career, closely followed by Aaron Rodgers, who has received the award on four occasions. One other potential indicator of the success of an NFL player is their annual salary. The highest-paid NFL player in 2023 was Lamar Jackson, quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens, who earned 80 million U.S. dollars from salary and bonuses and 1.5 million U.S. dollars from endorsement deals during the 2023 season.