The NFL's Impact on Business Performance

Open Access
- Author:
- Waznik, Gregory
- Area of Honors:
- Accounting
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Samuel Burton Bonsall, IV, Thesis Supervisor
Samuel Burton Bonsall, IV, Thesis Honors Advisor
Suzanne Wright, Faculty Reader - Keywords:
- Accounting
Football
Business
NFL - Abstract:
- Football has consistently been the most popular professional sport in the United States over the last decade with the National Football League (NFL) being the most popular league. In 2019, the average television viewership for a regular season game was nearly 17 million. Even with a slight dip in total viewership over the past decade, the NFL is still the dominant professional sports league in terms of overall revenue. With so many Americans tuning into the NFL every Sunday afternoon, the question arises of how a person’s attitude is impacted by the success of his or her favorite team. The NFL has an organization in 30 different metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) including 22 states. Not only do these 30 MSAs serve as homes to NFL organizations, but they are also home to some of the largest and most well-known publicly traded companies in not only the United States, but the entire world. The purpose of this study is to determine if any correlation is present between the success of an NFL organization and the financial success of publicly traded companies in that same MSA. The study will be performed by conducting a regression analysis on three different variables: average team winning percentage, return on assets, and operating margin.