The National Football League (NFL) has signed a multi-year agreement with electronics brand TCL.

Confirmed

  • TCL gains access to NFL marketing assets to promote its products
  • The electronics brand becomes the league’s official TV partner
  • The NFL brought in US$2.7 billion in sponsorship fees for the 2022/23 season
  • League deals usually start at US$10 million per year, ranging up to US$200 million for broader partnerships

Context:

The deal marks TCL’s first league sponsorship in the US, adding to the Chinese company’s agreement with the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Minnesota Timberwolves, which was first signed in 2016. Further afield TCL has a four-year, global agreement with the International Basketball Federation (Fiba).

The NFL meanwhile had been without a TV sponsor since the end of the 2010 season when its previous partnership with Samsung expired. 

Coming next:

The NFL expansive broadcast reach – it scored an average domestic audience of 16.7 million viewers per game during the 2022 regular season – will be leveraged by TCL to raise its profile across the US where sales stalled last year.

For the league, the partnership could potentially be used to expand the availability of its NFL+ over-the-top (OTT) platform. Pre-installing the streaming service on TCL’s smart TVs would provide expansive distribution, with more than 16 million TCL smart screens sold globally in the last year.