The NFL announced the news on Friday that the salary cap was increasing by a huge amount. Now we know why it jumped by so much.
The salary cap for 2024 will be $255.4M. That is a jump from $224.8M last year and marks the largest year-to-year increase since the cap was introduced 30 years ago based on pure dollar figures (the percentage increase from 2005 to 2006 was greater).
The league said in a statement that increases in media revenue, plus finances equalizing from the oddities of 2020, led to the big jump.
“The unprecedented $30M increase per club in this year’s salary cap is the result of the full repayment of all amounts advanced by the clubs and deferred by the players during the Covid pandemic as well as an extraordinary increase in media revenue for the 2024 season,” the league said in a statement.
The increase in media revenue is likely due to a combination of the new Sunday Ticket package deal with YouTube, the addition of a streaming-only playoff game, and Amazon’s Black Friday game. All the changes fans have been groaning about have helped the league’s finances, and that money will be circulated back to the players.
In 2020, the players did not want to take less money despite playing during the COVID-19 pandemic. So they and the league agreed to borrow from future years in order to help cover cash flow for 2020. The payments made on that borrowed money have been completed, which has allowed a return to an even financial picture.
The new salary cap for 2024 is more than $10M greater than what many media salary cap experts were expecting/projecting.
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