In the first few days of 2026, a viral trend emerged on social media: nostalgic throwback photos from 2016, complete with the Snapchat filters and skinny jeans of a decade ago.
The NFL will take things back to 2016 in its own way when the Super Bowl returns to Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, the same host as Super Bowl 50 a decade ago between the Broncos and Panthers.
Much has changed for the league in the 10 years since the Super Bowl last came to Northern California. Team valuations have soared, media rights are more lucrative than ever, and teams including the Broncos and Patriots have gone through the entire lifecycle of a rebuild. Led by the Super Bowl, NFL games consistently grab some of the biggest audiences in television, giving the league more power than ever.
Here are some of the biggest changes to the business of the NFL in the past decade:
Sports Betting
Taboo in 2016, sports betting has widely become legalized in the U.S. since the Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018. Not only is sports gambling normalized, the NFL and other leagues have partnerships with major sportsbooks that bring in hundreds of millions of dollars every year. The American Gaming Association estimates fans will bet $1.76 billion on Super Bowl LX on U.S. sportsbooks.
Team Valuations
The Cowboys are still the most valuable team in the NFL, but the landscape has changed entirely. Worth $4.2 billion in 2016, Jerry Jones’s team had a $13 billion valuation last year, according to Forbes. Every single team in the league was worth more than $5 billion last year, the outlet reported.
Private Equity
The league approved private equity investment in team ownership for a small group of approved firms in 2024. The Dolphins, Bills, and Chargers have all joined the trend.
Media Rights, Streamers, and an ESPN stake
In 2021, the NFL signed a monster $113 billion media rights deal with ESPN, NBC, CBS, Fox, and Amazon Prime Video. The 11-year deal began in 2023, but the NFL has made it clear it could sit down with media partners to discuss the future as early as this year. As streamers have continued their move into sports, the NFL has sliced off games to Prime, Peacock, Netflix, ESPN+, and YouTube. And, last year, the league announced ESPN would acquire NFL Network and the rights to distribute RedZone, while the NFL would take a 10% stake in the Worldwide Leader. The deal received government approval on Saturday.
TV Ratings
Super Bowl ratings jumped from around 112 million viewers for Super Bowl 50 to around 127.7 million viewers last year, but those two figures don’t capture the NFL’s TV dominance. Sports are one of the last pieces of must-watch television in the fractured media landscape, and nothing dominates ratings charts quite like the NFL. The league had five of the top 10 most-watched broadcasts of 2016, all of those coming in January. Last year, the NFL had nine of the top 10 telecasts, and 83 of the top 100, according to Sportico.
New Holidays
As part of its play to lean into streaming, the NFL has established itself on Black Friday and Christmas Day, and leaned into more weekday games. The 2025 Christmas Day game set a new record for the most streamed NFL game with 27.5 million U.S. viewers.
International Expansion
The NFL has been playing all over the globe for decades, but after those events switched from exhibition matches to regular season games in the mid-2000s, the league primarily only held those games in Toronto or London. The NFL created a marketing program in 2022 for teams to select countries where they want to put down roots, and in the past few years, brought regular season games to countries like Germany, Spain, Brazil, and Ireland. Australia is planned for this upcoming season. Goodell has been pushing for 16 international games and the lucrative media rights deal that could come with it, including a potential Super Bowl abroad.
League Revenue
The NFL’s coffers are overflowing. The league brought in more than $23 billion in revenue in 2024, which is about $10 billion more than what revenues were estimated as being a decade ago. Goodell has long been pining for $25 billion annually by 2027.
Goodell’s Salary
The commissioner’s salary had been falling to around $32 million in 2015, the last year the NFL was a nonprofit required to publicly release that number. In 2017, Goodell signed a five-year extension reportedly worth $40 million annually—he cut that to $0 during the pandemic—but reports said he took home closer to $64 million per year by the end of the deal. He signed another three-year contract in 2023, which was reportedly worth more than $200 million.
Salary Cap
NFL players are making a lot more money than they did 10 years ago. The league recently told clubs that next season’s salary cap will exceed $300 million, up from about $279 million this year. The salary cap for the 2015–16 season was roughly $143 million: less than half of next year’s amount.
Longer Season
Super Bowl 50 culminated a postseason with 12 teams and was the 19th game of the season for the Broncos and Panthers. The playoffs leading up to Super Bowl LX featured 14 teams, and the Big Game will be the 20th of the season for the Seahawks and 21st for the Patriots. The league expanded the playoff format in 2020, and the schedule grew from 16 to 17 regular season games the following year.
Commanders Transformation
No franchise has changed as much since 2016 as the Washington Commanders. The organization has seen sexual harassment allegations, two league investigations, a $60 million fine, a record $6.05 billion purchase bestowing the team to Josh Harris, two new names and logos, an on-field turnaround with coach Dan Quinn and quarterback Jayden Daniels, and a new stadium planned in D.C.
Los Angeles Football
The Rams moved back to L.A. in 2016, and the Chargers also moved up from San Diego the following year. This ended a 21-season span without the NFL in the country’s second-largest market. The other franchise that moved during the last decade also has roots in L.A.: the Raiders left Oakland for Las Vegas in 2020.
Indoor Stadiums
The NFL is trending toward having more indoor stadiums than outdoor ones in the coming years as a number of teams are planning new domed venues. In 2016, eight of the league’s stadiums had fully closed or retractable roofs, compared to 10 this season.
Concussion Payouts
The settlement approved in 2015 began making payouts to retired players in 2017. Black retirees successfully sued the league for “race-norming,” which assumed Black players start with lower cognitive function, and the league agreed to end the practice in 2021. The league has paid more than $1.4 billion in concussion settlements with retired players.
Political Activism
Colin Kaepernick first started kneeling for the national anthem in 2016 to protest racial injustice, sparking a movement across sports. In 2020, Roger Goodell said the league was “wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier” about racism, and the NFL started placing messages like “End Racism,” “Choose Love,” and “Stop Hate” across the back of its endzones.
Taylor Swift Impact
The NFL has seen a huge boost from Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce’s relationship with pop superstar Taylor Swift. The songwriter’s attendance is huge marketing for the league, especially among young female fans, and has driven new gameday fashion trends.
