On Thursday February 27th NFL teams were notified that the 2025 NFL Base Salary Cap will be set at $279.2 million dollars. That is a $23.8 million dollar increase from 2024 which was at $255.4 million. This is a $98 million dollar increase since post covid 2021.The reason for the incremental increases in salary cap is the incremental increases in revenue for the NFL, and the new revenue is due to a new way of watching NFL games.

Back in 2017, Amazon Prime was first to stream NFL games. By 2021 Amazon Prime bought the exclusive rights for Thursday Night Football.  The deal went into effect for the 2023 season and was worth $1 billion dollars a year for ten years. In 2024 Netflix exclusively streamed 2 feature games on Christmas Day. The first game was the Pittsburgh Steelers hosting the Kansas City Chiefs. The second game was the Baltimore Ravens visiting the Houston Texans. The viewership for both games averaged 30 million viewers globally. With that success Netflix is upping the ante to stream more games in 2025. It is being suspected that they will take over Sunday afternoon games from FOX and CBS in 2029 when current TV network deals expire. Other games are currently airing on Peacock which is streaming associated with NBC. The NFL Sunday Ticket package left Direct TV and moved to YouTube TV in 2023. Slowly but surely the NFL is much like WWE and is evolving to how their consumers watch their product.

Long gone are the days when people will tune in to a television network to watch their favorite program on a specific day and time. Now people stream their favorite shows and content at their own convenience from their devices. The number one reason people keep their cable television package is live sports. With this new trend starting with the NFL, cable television may no longer be needed to watch live sports in the next 5 -10 years. With new technology comes a new audience. And with that growing NFL audience the revenue and salary cap will grow with it. Times have indeed changed and so will the NFL.