NFL Draft = An American TV Juggernaut;
Ward, Hampton Lead ACC’s 2025 Prospects
By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
(last updated April 24, 2025)
Last April, when record-setting North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye became the #3 overall selection in the National Football League draft, the popular event’s estimated American television audience consisted of more than 12 million people.
That enormous TV number represented far more viewers than had watched Maye perform in any of the 30 games he played for the Tar Heels during the 2021, 2022 and 2023 seasons.
In addition, a record crowd of more than 275,000 attended the opening night of last year’s draft, which was held in Detroit. This year’s event will be held at historic Lambeau Field in Wisconsin, home of the Green Bay Packers.
“There’s almost as much demand for (hosting) the draft as there is for the Super Bowl,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said. “There are so many cities that can’t host the Super Bowl, but they can host the draft. It’s getting to the point now where the draft is … it’s not in the same league, but it’s pretty darn close.”
This year, Atlantic Coast Conference standouts such as Miami quarterback Cam Ward, Boston College defensive end Donovan Ezeiruaku and UNC running back Omarion Hampton will experience a similarly bright spotlight when they hear their names called, probably as first-round picks.
That’s what happens when you’re a prominent player joining the most lucrative sports organization in the world.
Decades ago, the NFL passed Major League Baseball as the highest-revenue professional sports league, and the NFL draft — which begins Thursday (8 pm, ABC/ESPN/ESPN Deportes/NFL Network/NFL+) and runs through Saturday — offers another major reminder why.
Millions of Americans care about football, and they care a lot, even when games aren’t being played.
As a television product, the NFL draft — and its highly publicized first round on Thursday, in particular — now often draws a larger TV/streaming audience than all but a handful of the most prominent GAMES offered by America’s other favorite sports.
For example, in 2023, the NFL draft’s first round drew an average audience of approximately 11.3 million viewers across the above-mentioned broadcast channels and their corresponding digital platforms. The 2023 National Basketball Association draft’s first round, another much-publicized event televised on ABC and ESPN, averaged about 4.9 million viewers.
For additional perspective on the magnitude of that 2023 first-round NFL audience, consider that the 2023 NBA championship series between the Denver Nuggets and the Miami Heat averaged approximately 11.6 million viewers per game, the 2023 World Series between the Texas Rangers and the Arizona Diamondbacks averaged approximately 9.1 million viewers per game, and the 2023 Stanley Cup finals between the Vegas Golden Knights and the Florida Panthers averaged approximately 2.6 million viewers per game.
Yes, you read that correctly. An offseason NFL event, in which not a pass was thrown nor a tackle made, once again came very close to attracting a larger first-night audience than ALL of those most important ACTUAL GAMES in the CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES of America’s other most popular professional team sports.
In recent years, coverage of the NFL draft’s first round consistently has attracted an average TV/streaming audience of more than 10 million American viewers. Even Maye’s three postseason appearances for the Tar Heels — in the 2022 Holiday Bowl (4 million), the 2023 Duke’s Mayo Bowl (3.8 million) and the 2022 ACC championship game (3.5 million) — fell well short of TV/streaming audiences even half that size.
Besides NFL games, the only regularly scheduled annual sporting events that routinely have attracted larger audiences than those of the NFL draft’s first round in recent years are the College Football Playoff (the three-game average can surpass 20 million per game), the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament (the three-game average has been in the 14-19 million per game range lately) and the one-hour-long “race segment” of Kentucky Derby horse racing coverage (14-17 million with occasional anomalies). Again, all of those involve actual games/races.
Thanks to multimedia contracts worth approximately $10 billion per year all the way through the 2033 season, the NFL is expected to become — within the next few years — the first sports organization ever whose annual revenues routinely surpass $20 billion per year.
The Super Bowl often draws an American TV/streaming audience of more than 100 million viewers, and in recent years, NFL games — including many of the regular-season variety — have produced a large majority of the most-watched TV events in America, and that includes cable or network broadcasts, sports or non-sports programming.
The powerful draw of the NFL can be similarly impressive during its offseason, and there’s no sign of that interest slowing down.
Each of the last five NFL drafts ranked among the eight most-watched in history, led by the all-time record 8.4 million average viewers (over the full three-day event and about 15 hours of coverage) during the 2020 COVID pandemic, 6.2 million in 2019 and 6.1 million in 2021.
NOTE: For more details on the top 2025 NFL draft prospects from ACC or North Carolina-based college football programs, please click HERE.
