How the NFL keeps fans transfixed even when there are no games

Nothing draws an audience quite like the National Football League. The season opener in September 2023 attracted nearly 25m viewers, and in February almost 124m Americans tuned in for Super Bowl LVIII. Yet the NFL is not satisfied with dominating the media for only five months a year. It has developed an uncanny ability to turn ordinary off-season events into spectacles.

Weeks after the season ends the league hosts a televised “scouting combine” for aspiring players to demonstrate their skills. Then comes the draft, when 32 teams recruit the best college talent. Since it was first televised in 1980, the draft has become a three-day extravaganza featuring live music and celebrity guests. Around 775,000 fans attended in person this year, and some 12m Americans viewed the first round. The NFL’s draft has become bigger than some leagues’ championship games.

Dozens of young men becoming instant millionaires naturally makes for good television. More impressive is the NFL’s ability to turn the most routine events into social-media phenomena. The release of the annual schedule of matches, which some teams have made into an art form, may be the best example of this prowess.

The Los Angeles Chargers are masters of the genre, publishing elaborate videos to announce their upcoming opponents and mercilessly mock them. This year the team produced a recreation of “The Sims”, a popular life-simulation video game. Most of the jokes poke fun at football-related controversies or their opponents’ weaknesses.

“We’ve really been intentional about making it a big moment,” says Ian Trombetta, the NFL’s senior vice-president of social, influencer and content marketing. “The clubs obviously add a ton to that.” One team included man-on-the-street videos collecting opinions about their opponents: “They peaked in 1970” (the New York Jets) or “Home of the cheese” (Green Bay Packers). Another prank-called their opponents’ fans. Viewership is up by almost 50% from last year.

The Chargers’ video—with more than 40m views since its release on May 15th—has resonated beyond traditional football fans. A kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, the Chargers’ week-four opponent, recently went viral after publicly encouraging women to remain at home and embrace anachronistic social mores. The video depicted him as a Sims character in a kitchen baking a pie.

“We’re building an army of young sports fans who are diabolically in love with this franchise because they followed us from the beginning through social,” says Jason Lavine of the Chargers’ front office. “It would be tough to find another sports team in North America that would be as online as us.”■