At the Sloan Sports Athletic Conference on Saturday, the Cowboys' Stephen Jones dropped a pretty surprising statistic. Wired's Eric Malinowski quotes:
Cowboys’ COO: 97 Percent Of NFL Fans Have Never Been To A Game
Cowboys COO Stephen Jones: Only 3 percent of NFL fans have actually attended an NFL game in person. #ssac
The term “NFL fans” isn’t explicitly defined here, but even if we expand the definition to “people who watch the Super Bowl primarily to watch the game itself,” that’s kind of shocking to me. If this figure is correct, it’s a pretty dramatic testament to the NFL’s ability to market itself.
One example within arm’s reach: in Louisville, where I live, there are no local major professional sports teams. Here, there is little to no interest in the NBA (though part of that owes it to the town’s obsession with college hoops), and from my experience, there aren’t many serious baseball fans, either. NHL fans are exceedingly rare. NFL fans, though, are all over the place.
The Cincinnati Bengals are within a 90-minute drive of Louisville, but anecdotally speaking, I've observed a similar level of interest in places that are further removed from an NFL franchise. The League is everywhere.
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