Latino audience critical to NFL growth in the U.S. and abroad

Earlier this month, a well-known musician showed up at a Kansas City Chiefs game as the National Football League continues its attempt to reach a new audience.

But this time, it wasn’t Taylor Swift cheering for Travis Kelce — as the pop star did at the Kansas City games, leading to a spike in viewership.

It was Puerto Rican rapper Daddy Yankee, known for hits like “Gasolina” and “Rompe.” He attended a Monday Night Football game at Arrowhead Stadium and spent time with Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco. Pacheco, who is of Puerto Rican descent, let Daddy Yankee try his two Super Bowl rings.

The time has come as part of the NFL’s “Por La Cultura” program. campaignwhich is in its fourth year and is a key part of the league’s efforts to grow its Latino and Spanish-speaking audience.

The NFL is known for its explosive ratings and is one of the most dominant sports in terms of viewership on both traditional television and streaming. A Nielsen report released earlier this week showed that football boosted ratings in September.

However, the league still looks forward to continued growth, both globally and in the United States. A key aspect of that expansion is the Hispanic audience, league and media officials told CNBC.

“I think when you have a successful product, you’re kind of tied to your success, right? I mean, there’s very little growth that comes from that. [the NFL] can actually perform within the regular US United States [English]“speaking population,” said Olek Loewenstein, global president of sports at TelevisaUnivision.

He noted that the Hispanic population “is one of the largest, if not the largest, growing and youngest in the United States.”

Marissa Solis, senior vice president of global brand and consumer marketing at the NFL, said she joined the league three years ago to “build momentum for our growing audiences.” For the NFL, she said that means three groups: viewers 35 and younger, a majority of whom Solis notes are Latino; women; and Latinos.

“It’s mathematically impossible for the league to grow without Latinos,” Solis said. “That audience is essential to our growth. And it’s essential to global growth, because there are so many connections and pride across borders, and the fandom crosses borders.”

When it comes to sports in the United States, Hispanic audiences favor soccer, followed by baseball and boxing, Loewenstein said. The NFL is still working to grow its brand in the global market, dominated by football and other sports.

“I think the NFL is one of the sports that is most likely to grow and explode among Hispanics,” Loewenstein said.

At the start of the season, the NFL expanded its reach to non-Spanish-speaking Latin American audiences, hosting a game in Brazil for the first time, while also offering more matchups at international venues. The game was broadcast exclusively on Comcast‘s Peacock and was the second most-watched live event for the streaming platform after an NFL playoff game earlier this year.

Paramount WorldwideCBS broadcast this year’s Super Bowl between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs, but since the network does not have a Spanish equivalent, it licensed these rights in the United States and Mexico to TelevisaUnivision.

Super Bowl on TelevisaUnivision’s live streaming network broke records, company says said, with an average of 2.3 million viewers across all its platforms, the largest audience for a Spanish-language broadcast of a Super Bowl.

Still, it’s a small contribution to the 2024 Super Bowl total of 123.4 million viewers.

“Seventy percent of the people who watched the Super Bowl hadn’t watched any other playoff games that year,” said TelevisaUnivision’s Lowenstein.

The first Super Bowl broadcast in Spanish took place in 2015 on the Fox Deportes cable television network. In 2022, NBCUniversal’s Telemundo aired the Super Bowl for the first time on a Spanish-language live broadcast network.

Although broadcasting the Super Bowl in Spanish is not part of the NFL’s media rights agreements, it has become an important priority as the NFL looks to expand availability, according to the league.

This was highlighted earlier this week when Fox Deportes and Telemundo announced that the two networks broadcast the Super Bowl in February. The two networks will “provide the widest Spanish-language distribution” of the Super Bowl in the United States in history, and the networks will produce separate broadcasts.

Since broadcasting the 2022 Super Bowl, Telemundo has seen “significant growth in our NFL audience,” said Joaquin Duro, executive vice president of sports at NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises.

Telemundo broadcasts every “Sunday Night Football” game in Spanish on both TV and Peacock. He noted that while the core audience still watches traditional television, streaming is becoming increasingly important. “It helps us attract younger, more tech-savvy viewers,” Duro said.

Like the NFL, Telemundo Deportes highlights the stories of Hispanic players. It also expanded its coverage around NFL events with an on-site presence at games and a greater range of interviews, Duro added.

“I like the change, the evolution, the expansion of the NFL,” said Rolando Cantú, former NFL player and analyst for “TNF en Espanol” and Telemundo Deportes’ “Sunday Night Football” show. .

Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.