The NFL is the richest sports league in the world with the average team worth $2.5 billion and operating profits of $101 million per franchise. The Super Bowl is the league’s crowning event and money will be one of the storylines in Sunday’s game between the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots. Here is everything you need to know about the millionaire players, billionaire owners, ticket prices, ads, betting and more in Super Bowl LII.
Owners’ Net Worth
Robert Kraft paid a then-record $172 million for the Patriots in 1994. The team is now worth $3.7 billion, tied for second with the New York Yankees among the most valuable sports franchises in the world (only the Dallas Cowboys are worth more and the Pats are just ahead of a trio of European soccer giants). Kraft, who made his first fortune in paper and packaging, is worth $6.2 billion. Other sports assets include the New England Revolution, a stake in UFC and an e-sports team.
Kraft closed his sale of the Pats in January of 1994. Four months later Jeffrey Lurie topped Kraft’s record price for an NFL franchise with his $185 million bid for the Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles are now worth $2.65 billion, tenth most in the NFL. Lurie relinquished a piece of the team during his 2012 divorce and the team represents the bulk of his $2 billion fortune. Lurie taught social policy at Boston University after he earned a master's degree there and a doctoral degree at Brandeis.
Player Salaries
The Eagles had the NFL’s fourth highest cash payroll in 2017 at $151 million (the Jacksonville Jaguars were tops at $168 million). The Patriots ranked 12th with $132 million, according to spotrac.
Defensive tackle Timmy Jernigan is the top earner on the Eagles this year with $11 million. The team signed the fourth-year player to a contract extension in November with a $10 million signing bonus. Fellow tackle Fletcher Cox has the highest average salary at $17 million as part of his six-year, $102 million pact.
Cornerback Stephon Gilmore is the Patriots’ top-paid player in 2017 thanks to a five-year, $65 million deal he signed as a free agent in March. Gilmore received a signing bonus of $18 million and his base salary was $4.5 million in 2017.
The Patriots paid Tom Brady only $1 million this season. His salary cap hit of $14 million was also one of the best bargains in football. No need to cry for Brady though. His career earnings of $197 million rank second among active players behind only Eli Manning, and his wife, Gisele Bundchen, has been the top-paid supermodel in the world for most of the past 15 years.
Super Bowl Winnings
NFL salaries only cover the regular season. Each player on the winning side of the Super Bowl will receive $112,000, up $5,000 from last year. Players on the losing team will get $56,000. Players on both teams earned $79,000 each already for their first two playoff wins in January.
Ads
NFL ratings were down the past two years after four straight years of gains, but the Super Bowl is still the only TV program of the year with more than 100 million Americans glued to their sets. The average audience was 111.3 million last year, fifth highest all time.
The average price for a 30-second spot is “north of $5 million,” according to Dan Lovinger, executive vice president of advertising sales for NBC Sports, the network for Sunday's game. Total ad spending will reach $500 million for the game, pregame festivities, postgame and episode of “This Is Us” to air after the Big Game.
The most buzzed about ad leading up to the game is for one that won't air. The NFL rejected a commercial from the American Veterans that showed an American flag with the hashtag #PleaseStand. The NFL stuck with its policy of denying ads that make a "political statement.”
Prop bets around Super Bowl advertising include how many times the singular “dilly” (not to be confused with “dilly dilly) is uttered in a Bud Light commercial (over/under is 12.5). Another gambling opportunity: how many ads Peyton Manning appears in during the telecast (2.5 times as of this writing).
NBC
The Peacock Network is in the midst of a nine-year deal for its Sunday Night Football package. It pays an average of $950 million annually and also gets the rights to three Super Bowls during the pact. It will be the 19th Super Bowl broadcast by NBC with Al Michaels handling play-by-play for his tenth Super Bowl. Cris Collinsworth is working his fourth Super Bowl The NBC Sports Group will have 200-plus hours of coverage during the week and the Sunday broadcast will feature 106 cameras.
Tickets
The list price on Super Bowl 52 tickets ranges from $950 to $5,000 for premium seats. Prices on the secondary market can soar much higher with the get-in price at $2,550 and the average resale price $5,739, according to TicketIQ as of Sunday.
Gambling
The Super Bowl is the ultimate betting event with box pools and nearly 1,000 prop bets at the William Hill sports book like the coin toss and obscure ones like Kyrie Irving’s points on Sunday for the Celtics versus Rob Gronkowski’s longest reception. Brady is the Super Bowl MVP favorite at 8/5 odds. As for the game itself, the Patriots are five-point favorites with the over/under at 48 ½ total points.
A record $138.5 million was bet on Super Bowl 51 at Nevada sportsbooks. The house won as usual with Vegas netting $10.9 million. Las Vegas has lost money on only two Super Bowls over the past quarter-century. Betting in Vegas is a drop in the bucket of the total gambling pool with the American Gaming Association estiming $4.6 billion to be wagered illegally on this year's game.
Halftime Show
Pepsi will sponsor the halftime show for the sixth straight year. The sponsorship costs an estimated $7 million a year, according to SportsBusiness Journal. Justin Timberlake is the headline act. Per usual, the NFL will not pay JT to perform.
The halftime show, which was watched by 117.5 million people last year or more than the game, is a 12-minute promo for the performers. It was the fourth straight year more people tuned into the halftime show than the game. Bruno Mars, Beyonce, Katy Perry and others all saw huge spikes in music downloads and album sales after their Super Bowl performances. Timberlake, 37, will release his fifth studio album, Man of the Woods, on February 2.
Super Bowl Brand
The Super Bowl is the most valuable sporting event brand in the world with estimated revenue of $630 million last year from TV, tickets, sponsorships, merchandise and more. Rockport Analytics conducted a study and projected a net economic boost for Minnesota of $343 million for the Super Bowl based on 125,400 visitors spending four nights in a hotel and $620 per day.
