Football (Soccer) is the richest sport in the world with a global market value of around $600 Billion (American Football $200 Billion).
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Football is played by over 300 million people (the equivalent of the whole population of the USA) throughout 200 nations around the world.
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On Forbes’ list of highest-paid athletes, Lionel Messi with a net worth of $130 million at #1 rank, Christiano Ronaldo at #3 with a net worth of $115 million, and Neymar at #4 with a $95 million net worth.
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Sorry, but I feel I need to chip in, I'm European and love Football and I've been watching Soccer as well for all my life basically.
In North America Football is The Sport, the NFL is not a sports league, it's a money printing machine, it makes a lot of sense for Apple to try to acquire Sunday Ticket or anything related to the NFL.
They won't be bringing it outside of the US, or raise prices in other markets, because, outside of North America, the NFL is already covered, they have the Game Pass International, 190€ per season and you can watch every single game, pre-season, regular season and post-season and the Super Bowl, both live and on-demand, and I still believe that, if Apple gets Sunday Ticket, it would be a separate purchase, I don't think they will require people to have a subscription either.
But, really, to put things in perspective, Tom Brady - the greatest football player of all time, can we all agree on that? - got an offer from FOX, when - or if - he retires, to become a commentator, 375 million dollars for 10 years, to work around 20, 25 days per year basically, you see that kind of money, in soccer, only for the top players.
As for the money players are getting, keep in mind that in all team sports in North America you do have a salary cap, which is enforced, not like that financial fair play joke UEFA came up with, in the NFL you'll never be able to assemble teams like PSG or Manchester City, you simply won't have the money, I think that Mbappé, Neymar and Messi alone get more money than the entire salary cap for a NFL team - I think it's around 120 million dollars - and a football team's roster is 50, 55 players, plus staff.
I think that most top European soccer teams would crumble if a salary cap was enforced here, maybe only Liverpool, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid would survive, the first two are well managed and Real Madrid prints money.
I think nobody is arguing the soccer is more widespread worldwide, there are both cultural and practical reasons to that. Playing soccer is easier than playing football, first to play football you need certain physical characteristics you don't need to play soccer (legends like Iniesta, Xavi, Pirlo, Messi, Neymar would never be able to play football, they'd die on the field no matter their position), football is a contact sport and, like with every contact sport, you need to be a little crazy to play it, and you need expensive protective gear, whereas for soccer you need a ball, a field, posts, and maybe shin guards.
Going back to the original topic, one thing I think might give the NFL cold feet is streaming delay. When streaming a live event there's always a delay, when I watched Champions League games on Amazon Prime Video the delay was more than 1 minute, sometimes closer to two minutes, when I watched Thursday Night NFL games the delay was there, some people might get pissed off, but I think the biggest consideration is being given to live betting, I guess there's a lot of money involved in gambling, and no one is going to bet on a live game that they're watching with one or two minutes delay.
