The National Football League (NFL) is the premier professional American football league, consisting of 32 teams. While you can't just pop onto your brokerage account and buy shares of “NFL,” it stands as a phenomenal case study in business and a masterclass for any value investing enthusiast. The league operates as a trade association, a collection of immensely valuable, privately-owned franchises that have collectively built one of the most powerful and profitable entertainment brands in the world. Understanding the NFL's business model—its impenetrable economic moat, its gushing revenue streams, and its fanatical customer loyalty—provides a blueprint for what value investors look for in a great, long-term investment. It's a lesson in identifying businesses with durable competitive advantages, even if the business itself isn't on the stock market.
The NFL's financial might comes from a clever combination of shared wealth and individual team enterprise. The league's core strength is its revenue-sharing model, which acts as a safety net for all 32 franchises. The largest component of this is the national media rights deals. The NFL negotiates multi-billion-dollar contracts with major broadcasters—like Disney (ESPN/ABC), Comcast (NBC), Paramount Global (CBS), Fox Corporation, and Amazon—and divides the money equally among all teams. This firehose of cash ensures that even a team in a small market with a losing record remains highly profitable. On top of this shared foundation, teams generate their own local revenue from sources like:
This structure creates a “high-floor, high-ceiling” scenario. The shared media money provides a stable floor of profitability, while savvy management and a winning team can build a skyscraper of local revenue on top of it.
The NFL is the textbook definition of a business with a wide and deep economic moat, protecting it from competition. From a value investor's perspective, its defenses are legendary.
A moat is a company's ability to maintain its competitive advantages and defend its long-term profits. The NFL's moat is built from several powerful sources:
This is the billion-dollar question for many fans and investors. The short answer is, unfortunately, no. The NFL league office is a non-profit organization, and 31 of the 32 teams are privately owned by wealthy individuals, families, or groups of private equity investors. They are not publicly traded companies, so you cannot buy their shares.
The sole exception is the Green Bay Packers, which is a non-profit, community-owned corporation. The team is owned by hundreds of thousands of “shareholders.” However, these shares are more of a collectible or a certificate of fandom than a true investment. They don't appreciate in value, cannot be traded, pay no dividends, and grant no real power. It's a fantastic model for community engagement, but not a vehicle for financial return.
While you can't own a team, you can invest in the public companies that form the NFL's vast business ecosystem. This is known as making a “proxy” investment. If you believe in the continued dominance of the NFL, you can buy shares in companies that directly benefit from its success.
You can't add an NFL team to your investment portfolio next to your shares of Apple or Microsoft. However, the league serves as an invaluable educational tool. It teaches investors to look for businesses with the same qualities that make the NFL a juggernaut: a powerful brand, recurring and predictable revenue, a wide economic moat, and a loyal customer base. The real takeaway is not to find a way to buy a team, but to find the “NFL” of the stock market—a business so dominant and well-defended that it can generate wealth for its owners for decades to come.