As the media world has continued to evolve through social media and streaming, sports has remained a hot commodity. Ratings have fluctuated for live sports, but rights deals continue to shoot up as broadcasters recognize the added value they can extract from sports rights beyond the core viewership number, and that sports maintains a unique hold on monoculture.
Those growing rights deals have a collateral effect: Rising contracts for athletes. And this year, we saw some of the biggest deals in U.S. history.
To summarize some of the major events that happened in the business of sports, here are eight data visualizations that define 2024.
1. WNBA: Most-Watched Games (Caitlin Clark)
The WNBA had a banner year in 2024. Regular-season attendance was up 48% compared to last year, while viewership was up 170% on ESPN and 133% on Ion.
While the league has gained momentum over the past half-decade, this year’s success was undoubtedly due to the 2024 rookie class—particularly No. 1 overall pick Caitlin Clark. Thirty-one WNBA telecasts, including the All-Star game, averaged over one million viewers this year, with 22 of them involving Clark.
However, the rest of the league definitely felt the spillover from Clark’s presence, as the WNBA Finals, which did not feature the Fever, pulled 1.57 million viewers over five games, up 115% from 2023.
2. NFL Quarterback Contracts
The quarterback market grew once again in 2024 after six quarterbacks received nine-figure deals: Kirk Cousins, Jared Goff, Trevor Lawrence, Jordan Love, Tua Tagovailoa, and Dak Prescott. Excluding Cousins, the one person in the group that moved teams, the new contracts represent five of the six highest contracts in the NFL in terms of average annual value. Prescott leads the way at $60 million per year.
Patrick Mahomes still has the largest total contract in the league at $450 million over 10 years.
3. MLB Megadeals
It’s impossible to talk about player contracts without touching on Major League Baseball. Shohei Ohtani’s $700 million deal, which was reported in December 2023, was trumped a year later by Juan Soto, who agreed to a 15-year, $765 million deal with the Mets this month. Soto’s deal does not have the deferrals included in Ohtani’s deal which reduced its current-day value, as calculated by MLB, to $460 million.
4. College Football
The landscape of college football has changed significantly due to playoff expansion, conference realignment, the transfer portal, and the integration of new name, image, and likeness rules. Powerhouses, however, remain the most-watched programs. Georgia was by far the most-watched program this year, followed by Ohio State and Alabama.
The list also shows the continued control of the Big Ten and SEC in college football. The Big Ten’s media-rights deal is worth $1.15 billion annually with Fox/NBC/CBS and runs until 2030, while the SEC’s deal is $710 million per year with ESPN until 2034.
5. NBA and MLB: Finals and World Series Viewership
Viewership is always a hot topic. That was particularly true in the NBA and MLB.
MLB recorded its most-watched World Series in seven years after it was gifted a dream matchup between Shohei Ohtani’s Dodgers and Aaron Judge’s Yankees. The timing was great for baseball following last year’s World Series between the Rangers and Diamondbacks, which was the league’s least-watched World Series ever. MLB has also seen some positive momentum over the last two years in keeping fans engaged since instituting new rules like the pitch clock have helped cut down the length of games.
On the other hand, ratings have been a sour point of the NBA this season. The league was facing double-digit percentage declines in viewership through the first two months of the season—but got positive news after recording an 87% year-over-year increase on Christmas. The total regular-season number is now down to a decline of just 3%.
NBA Finals viewership has dropped since a strong stretch between 2015 and 2018—when Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors faced LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers four consecutive times.
6. College Basketball
Clark’s impact on the WNBA began before she was drafted, as she drove history in the college ranks. The women’s college basketball championship drew 18.9 million viewers, four million more than the men’s game—the first time in history the women’s game drew more than the men’s. The men’s game drew 14.8 million viewers, its second-lowest audience ever, ahead of only last year’s contest.
Clark and Iowa made back-to-back finals in 2023 and 2024, with last year’s game against Angel Reese and LSU setting a then-record of 9.9 million viewers. The Hawkeyes drew over ten million viewers for their final three games, starting in the Elite Eight.
7. Tennis Prizes
All four tennis majors saw record purses in 2024, highlighted by the U.S. Open, which had a $75 million purse which was the most in the history of the sport. Men’s world No. 1 Jannik Sinner took home $19.7 million this year after winning the Australian Open, U.S. Open, and the ATP Final—which on its own was a $4.88 million payout.
8. Olympics Viewership
The Paris Olympics delivered buzz and viewership that helped the event recover from viewership lows during the last summer games in Tokyo which was marred by the COVID-19 pandemic. NBCU reported an 82% increase between the last two Summer Olympics—though the numbers are slightly inflated as this year’s number was “total audience delivery” which combined viewership numbers from prime time windows in France and the U.S.
Nonetheless, the numbers are a positive sign for NBCU, which, in 2014, agreed to a $7.65 billion deal for the rights to the Summer and Winter Games through 2032.
