What is the average NFL player salary per season?
Guess before you scroll — the answer is below
The answer
$2,700,000
Roughly $2.7M.
The average NFL salary is around $2.7 million — high, but far below the NBA’s $11.9 million, because a football roster has 53 players instead of 15. NFL careers also last about 3.3 years on average, so the lifetime figure is much smaller than it looks.
How to get close to this number
Divide revenue by a much larger roster. This league earns more than the basketball one but splits its salary pool among fifty-three players per team rather than fifteen. More revenue divided among three and a half times as many people gives a figure several times lower.
The comparison in the explanation is the point: high in absolute terms, far below the basketball average, purely because of roster size. Two leagues with comparable commercial scale produce average salaries differing by a factor of four, and the entire difference is how many people are on the team.
The career length is the figure that changes the picture completely: around three point three years on average. A high annual salary over a three-year career produces a lifetime total far below what the annual number suggests, and in a sport with that injury rate the relevant statistic is career earnings rather than salary.
Where this number comes from
| Source | NFL salary data compiled by Spotrac |
|---|---|
| Figure refers to | 2024 |
| Last checked | |
| Unit | dollars |
Numbers move. If this one has drifted from its source, let us know.
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