The NFL’s preseason viewership was up substantially this year, offering a meaningful preview of what’s potentially to come in the regular season. 

The league said the entire preseason averaged 2.2 million viewers per game across linear and digital platforms, up 17% from last year and the best such mark since 2018. For the NFL Network specifically, each game averaged 1.8 million viewers, that outlet’s best preseason mark on record and up by 26% from 2024.

The July 31 Pro Football Hall of Fame Game that began the league’s preseason slate also started the upward march in viewership, with that Chargers-Lions clash averaging 6.9 million viewers, a 40% bump from the 2024 event.

While still exhibition play, the figures give the NFL a sizable dose of momentum after regular-season ratings in 2024 fell by 2.2% from the previous year to 17.5 million viewers per game. While many top stars play sparingly, if at all, during the preseason, fans were enthused to see how their favorite teams shaped their rosters and positional battles, such as quarterback in Cleveland, ultimately won by veteran Joe Flacco. 

The NFL preseason figures could also be an early sign of what’s to come from the newly expanded audience data from Nielsen. The measurement agency is in the midst of rolling out its Big Data + Panel methodology, which incorporates traditional tallies of viewership, such as panel-based tabulation, along with data from set-top boxes and smart TVs.

The enlarged methodology is expected to show higher viewership averages for many different forms of programming, particularly live sports and the NFL within that, as Nielsen provides a more holistic view of audience behaviors. 

Power of the Shield

Additionally, the NFL viewership figures for 2025 compare strongly to some recent portions of regular-season and playoff competition in other top sports leagues. 

ESPN’s average this year for Sunday Night Baseball, a primetime showcase for Major League Baseball, is 1.765 million, even after an 11% jump. The NHL’s 2025 Stanley Cup Final, meanwhile, averaged 2.5 million viewers in the U.S.

As college football games begin this weekend, the sport is looking and feeling more corporate, with schools continuing to shift their business models in the first year of revenue-sharing.

This season, more big-name programs and traditional powerhouses are hopping on the trend of adding on-field sponsor logos—one of the most noticeable money-making practices for fans.

Texas is debuting the logo of cardiovascular health company Humann across all its sports venues, including on the field at 100,000-seat Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium. The additional cash that the deal will bring in comes on top of the Longhorns bringing in $331.9 million in operating revenues during the 2023–24 fiscal year, marking the first time that a Division I public school has reported more than $300 million in both revenues and expenses in the same year.

SEC schools Arkansas and South Carolina are also adding sponsor logos to their football fields this season, and Penn State—one of the oldest programs in college football—will now be playing at West Shore Home Field at Beaver Stadium after selling the naming rights to their playing surface.

Before the NCAA changed its rules last year, corporate logos were allowed on the field only at bowl games, sponsored neutral sites, and instances when a sponsor had purchased naming rights to the field, stadium, or facility.

Many schools across the nation—including big brands like Tennessee and Oklahoma State—quickly hopped on the sponsor field logo trend in 2024.

The Next Frontier?

LSU, which has not yet sold an on-field sponsorship at Tiger Stadium, is reportedly seeking approval from the NCAA to sell sponsored jersey patches, which would be a first in college athletics. School officials believe the move could bring in millions of dollars annually, according to The New Orleans Advocate.

If the NCAA were to allow sponsored jersey patches, like professional teams in the NBA, NHL, and MLB already have, schools could theoretically sell packaged deals in which a brand’s name and/or logo could appear on both the team’s playing surface and players’ jerseys.

The Atlanta Dream are in the middle of one of the WNBA’s biggest one-year turnarounds. After hiring head coach Karl Smesko and adding several veteran pieces, the Dream are 10 games above .500 with two weeks left in the season. They finished 10 games below .500 last year.

But as one of the WNBA’s independent teams—and one that has not tasted a championship in franchise history—the Dream still face several challenges. One of those manifested on Wednesday in the team’s loss to the Las Vegas Aces, who won back-to-back WNBA titles in 2022 and 2023.

The Aces, who passed the Dream to claim the No. 2 spot in the standings, used a 21–6 third-quarter run to take the road win. In the fourth quarter, Las Vegas star A’ja Wilson received “MVP” chants from the fans in the Gateway Center Arena in Atlanta.

Dream star Rhyne Howard was not happy with the reaction from her home fans, saying the Aces’ third-quarter surge was fueled by the Atlanta crowd’s support.

“This is a challenge. We rely on our fans, and when they pick and choose who they want to root for and come in and make it feel like an away game for us and a home game for the other team, it’s easy to go on a run like that,” Howard said.

The three-time All-Star alluded to how fans may be rooting for Wilson because she played college basketball at South Carolina, which is only a few hours away from Atlanta. However, Dream wing Allisha Gray, who is in the 2025 WNBA MVP conversation, also played for South Carolina and was Wilson’s teammate. Rookie Te-Hina Paopao is also a former Gamecock.

“You wanna go see Gamecocks? We have Gamecocks on our roster. The last game, we had MVP chants for one of our players. Don’t get here and switch up because of one player. Yes, we do make mistakes, but it’s easy to lose momentum when you have other people cheering against you,” said Howard, who was the No. 1 pick in the 2022 draft.

The MVP chants are even more amplified considering the Dream’s arena has the smallest capacity among all WNBA home venues. Their arena fits fewer than 4,000 fans per game, though team president Morgan Shaw Parker told Front Office Sports in March that they are exploring a move to an arena that seats up to 14,000.

Atlanta—the league’s last expansion team before the Golden State Valkyries joined this year—is one of the few remaining WNBA teams whose ownership group is not tied to an NBA team.