Marketing the NFL on Scarcity

For Super Bowl Sunday, Richard Siklos and the Your Money column of the Times offers a thesis that the NFL is significantly much more profitable than all other American sports (combined). It's a compelling economic/marketing argument (though fortunately written far less predictably than Malcolm Gladwell would have written it ;-)

Yet a lesson lurks in today’s big show — with its 90 million viewers watching $2.6-million, 30-second commercials and consuming untold vats of seven-layer dip. To my eye, part of the Super Bowl’s pre-eminence stems from one of the savvy and counterintuitive ways in which the National Football League has reinforced its brand value: by emphasizing its scarcity.

It’s hard to say for certain, but there is data to suggest that the N.F.L. generates more profit than the combined profit of America’s other three major sports leagues — the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball. The N.F.L. churns out that operating profit, estimated at about $1 billion, with only 16 regular season games a year, versus 82 for basketball, 84 for hockey and 162 for baseball.

Beyond the X’s and O’s, a Lesson in How to Be Big