NFL Season Expansion Continues as Super Bowl Pushes Further into the Calendar
This Sunday marks a unique convergence of sports traditions, highlighting the impact of NFL season expansion as two major events overlap. In Arizona, the Chicago Cubs’ pitchers and catchers will take to the fields in Mesa for their first official workout of the 2025 season. Just a few hours later, the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles will battle for the Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl 59, hosted under the bright lights of New Orleans’ Superdome. This scheduling overlap reflects the NFL’s growing presence in the sports calendar, extending further into February each year.
For the second year in a row, the NFL season will bleed into baseball’s symbolic new beginning, an occurrence that appears destined to become the norm. As the league continues to extend its presence on the sports calendar, other leagues are finding themselves adjusting to Big Football’s growing influence.
The Super Bowl will be played on Valentine’s Day in 2027, a coincidence that happens as the league heads toward its target of surpassing $25 billion in annual revenue, according to Commissioner Roger Goodell. It is likely that the 18th regular-season game, if the players’ union agrees, will push the NFL season further into February—and perhaps even into March.
“The NFL isn’t worried about getting too big. The purpose has always been to maintain this league as relevant throughout the calendar year, “Deninger said. “From pushing the draft into spring to having training camps in the summer, football has overtaken sports.”
The NFL’s 14-game season ended with a Super Bowl on January 15 in 1977. A year later, the league stretched its season to 16 games, and the Super Bowl moved to January 21. In the decades since, the cumulative effects of added bye weeks, expanded playoffs, and increased television presence have pushed the season’s end gradually into winter.
After the attacks of 9/11 happened in 2001, a delayed week moved that season’s Super Bowl to February for the first time. Since 2004, the game has stayed in February, which only strengthens the hold football has throughout the year. The 2021 expansion to a 17-game schedule extended the season another year, in which the Super Bowl now always comes in mid-February.
The league’s schedule now includes no idle time. About two weeks following the Super Bowl, the main event is now the NFL Scouting Combine. In mid-March, things really get serious as the league year begins anew, and with it, a frenzy of free agency. About a month or so later is the NFL Draft, which automatically segues to training camp during July.
Deninger points out that the NFL has the greatest fan interest 11 months of the year, except for June, when MLB briefly usurps the attention.
But prime time television is limited, and the NFL has demonstrated a willingness to fight for eyeballs on any given day. That was particularly true on Christmas Day in 2024, a holiday that had long been owned by the NBA.
Since Christmas fell on a Wednesday, the NFL rearranged its schedule, staging a doubleheader that peaked at over 27 million viewers. In the meantime, the highly publicized Lakers-Warriors game averaged 7.7 million viewers-a far cry from what the NFL exerts in power.
LeBron James, after initially defending the NBA’s traditional Christmas dominance, later acknowledged the NFL’s superior ratings on Travis and Jason Kelce’s podcast. “From a viewership standpoint, you all kicked our (expletive),” he admitted.
The NFL’s international aspirations further complicate the calendar. Over and above, the league plans to increase its overseas games to 16 a year, with the aim of keeping a global footprint all-year-round. The rest of the leagues are not idle either. For instance, the Cubs begin their spring training earlier this year ahead of a mid-March series in Japan against the Los Angeles Dodgers – in a general trend of leagues moving into new markets.
With congested sports schedules, the traditional boundaries of seasons are fading away. And as the NFL continues to grow its stranglehold, other leagues have to determine how to coexist in a world where football is the king.
