This week, the Super Bowl ended with the Seahawks dominating the Patriots, but the real story, as always, had nothing to do with the action on the field.
That’s because the Super Bowl is more than a sporting event – it’s a cultural touchstone, a uniquely American spectacle (even when the halftime show is in Spanish, it’s somehow more mutually intelligible with English than Bawitdaba or the seminal Po Dunk).
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It’s also the last true appointment viewing event in American media, the kind of shared cultural moment that disappeared along with the MASH finale, the ‘Who Shot JR’ cliffhanger on Dallas, or Liza Minnelli appearing on any daytime talk show.
For comparison, only about 8 million people globally have watched Oscar frontrunner Marty Supreme (about 7 million more than Melania); the most recent White Lotus season captured the Zeitgeist, but only around 6 million viewers to date; or 2025 Best Musical Tony winner Maybe Happy Ending, which has sold just over half a million tickets since its debut in 2016.
That sort of viewership is why the Super Bowl remains an unprecedented media and advertising machine, with companies shelling out an eye-watering $8 million for a single 30-second spot, with some ads selling for as much as $10 million. That’s basically like throwing the equivalent of the annual GDP of a developing nation towards a crypto commercial with a questionable celebrity cameo, or the entire average budget of an A24 release on a single spot.
Is it worth it? Well, the Super Bowl drives the one mass audience moment remaining in American media, and brands are willing to pay exorbitant fees for that concentrated attention, even though ads are optimized for word of mouth and brand awareness – not direct sales impact.
Break-even analysis shows that to justify spending, Super Bowl advertisers require tens of millions in incremental revenue before generating any revenue from their spend, and tens of millions more to justify the resulting ROI. And yet, ad space sells out months in advance, with demand (and pricing) soaring every year.
The stupid money generated by the biggest of Big Games is great news for anyone working in the media industry, too, with thousands of jobs created around the periphery of this multi-ring circus – the game is a reliable boon for roles ranging from production crews to live technicians and post production editors to event marketers, media planners, account teams, and more.
A recent study by a Bay Area think tank (hella) estimated that the most recent Super Bowl would create over 5,000 local jobs, plus an additional 15,000 roles from increased demand in tourism, logistics, and event support.
These numbers are a bit misleading; the overwhelming majority of these roles are obviously temporary, gig, or contract work that’s both inherently seasonal and highly unstable. Even then, the competition is fierce.
The people you see working the game are not “the lucky few.” They’re actually the survivors of a brutally competitive labor market that chews up ambition while restricting opportunities.
For the 60 jobs created for local youth through the Juma program in partnership with the Super Bowl, thousands of applicants competed for roles with an average pay of around $18.70 an hour; staying above the poverty line in the Bay Area, by contrast, requires at least $27/hr minimum hourly wage.
But this low pay, extreme competition for a handful of unstable opportunities, isn’t just reserved for the big events like the Super Bowl – it’s endemic throughout the multi-billion-dollar economic driver that is the sports industry.
That’s why this week, we’re taking a closer look at sports-related careers and job trends. We’ll look at what the numbers say, where hiring is actually happening, and what the future holds for jobs in the sports media and industry.
Super Bowl LX didn’t just deliver TV ratings; it underscored how many people you need behind the scenes to deliver that spectacle.
From sideline reporters flying between franchises to influencers-turned-broadcast contributors, the industry’s talent pipeline extends far beyond the field.
But before we dive into our deep dive into careers in sports, let’s take a look at the week’s biggest stories, and break down what the headlines really mean for industry professionals and media careers.
1. The Labor Economics of the Super Bowl
The Super Bowl isn’t just a football game; it’s a content factory, with everyone from podcasters, producers, and technical crews to sportswriters, broadcasters, and on-site coordinators creating the engine driving a week’s worth of multi-platform coverage that generates more eyeballs than any other entertainment event of the year.
In just the last few years, credentialed media covering the show has skyrocketed – the NFL now includes social, streaming, and even influencers in the accredited press pool of almost 6500 media professionals, compared to only 2400 in 2021.
Additionally, networks, newsrooms, and digital platforms add an estimated 4,800-5,000 roles each year to simply meet demand from viewers, visitors, and voyeurs. And that’s not even including the cast of thousands backing halftime performer Bad Bunny – or the 3 temporary PAs responsible for the Kid Rock-led “alternative” halftime debacle.
That show was for the questions that don’t have any answers, the midnight glancers, and the topless dancers (and whoever Lee Brice is).
Read more: The Economics of the Super Bowl, By the Numbers (Time)
2. Influencers are packing the press box
While you probably hadn’t heard of any of the performers at the Turning Point halftime extravaganza unless you’re a big fan of American Idol deep cuts, chances are you’ve heard of one of the army of YouTube stars the NFL enlisted to cover the big game.
From Mr. Beast to Haylie Kalil (who’s probably hoping to avoid a hung jury in her impending libel case – boom), the league turned to exclusive streaming partner YouTube in a deliberate attempt to court a younger audience of viewers.
While those elusive Gen Z viewers probably have no idea what the hell that Good Will Dunkin’ ad was referencing, nor who Ben Affleck or Jennifer Aniston are (lucky them), they’re also not turning grown men giving each other CTE into event viewing – a cause for concern for a league that’s trying to soften its image as a blood sport controlled by really rich, old, stodgy white dudes. Look no further than the GOP to see how that perception resonates with the younger generation.
YouTube’s Super Bowl LX blitz included a full roster of content produced in partnership with the NFL, Google and capitalist pawns (er, creators), including an influencer flag football game, stand ups from the Levi Stadium field and access normally reserved for traditional media, such as interview opportunities with players and coaches, who no doubt were happy to trade Al Michaels for Kay Adams for their locker room sound bites.
This resulted in non-traditional coverage and behind-the-scenes access to live moments that most traditional sports media wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. It’s an experiment that leans hard into the NFL embracing influencers as distribution and branding partners, rather than just those crazy kids from the interwebs who would have never before been considered for credentials.
Read More: The NFL Wants To Attract Younger Fans; YouTube Blitzed Super Bowl LX To Try To Make That Happen (Deadline)
Why It Matters for Your Career
The “sports reporter” job used to be about wire copy and beat notes; today, the business is aggressively pivoting toward creator economics, where audiences follow personalities and develop parasocial relationships with individual influencers rather than with networks or mainstream media outlets.
That means opportunities for anyone who can build an engaged online audience, produce compelling short-form content, and game the algorithm for relevance and reach. Sports leagues and broadcast rights holders (like Google) are increasingly outsourcing more of their media strategy to creators with built-in fan bases and millions of followers.
This growing push towards non-traditional content isn’t a one-off; it’s proof that you can build a viable career by leveraging social media skills and making sports feel relevant to non-traditional audiences and younger viewers. Talking heads on TV will always have a place in sports media, but the playing field continues to widen – as do the opportunities for savvy sports streamers.
3. The Economics of Advertising
Love it or hate it, advertising drives the economic engine, generating billions of dollars in annual revenue for sports media. The Super Bowl is the closest thing the US has to a monoculture moment (Incluso cuando Bad Bunny canta en español, es un crack) – and brands are paying 8 to 10 million dollars for half a minute of airtime because it’s really the only legacy brand left capable of consistently capturing an otherwise fragmented audience.
That’s some expensive paid media, but it’s more than big companies burning brand marketing budgets. Those spots represent entire payrolls, teams of strategists, media buyers, creatives, data scientists, production crews, and agency account leads whose entire year can hinge on how they rank on the USA Today Ad Meter. Of course, the on-air ad is only a small part of the all-out blitz that starts months before kick-off.
If they’re buying big for the big game, even the most mundane consumer packaged good will be working for months on integrated campaigns involving teasers, influencer tie-ins, event activation, media planning, brand lift studies, and other really exciting marketing motions.
After the confetti falls, analysts will pore over engagement metrics, sentiment data, conversion signals and Q ratings (among other made-up agency “analytics”) to prove to their clients that they generated ROI on their ten million dollar ad spend, and that it was definitely not a forgettable, regrettable budgetary bonfire.
Read more: Super Bowl Ads Cost $10 Million for 30 Seconds (Bloomberg)
Why It Matters for Your Career:
For anyone in sports media, this one’s pretty obvious. The Super Bowl is more than a big-time broadcast; it’s a marketing machine that generates billions of dollars in brand spend every year.
According to Nielsen, live sports are one of the only formats that consistently reach millions of viewers in real time – a big reason why ad dollars keep going up, even as linear television goes down for the count. That sustained demand fuels what jobs in creative direction, performance marketing, audience analytics, and media buying, among other disappearing disciplines.
Many aspiring sports media professionals approach their nascent careers like fans; they should remember that, in this industry, the real action is never on the field. It’s in the boardrooms and war rooms where brands decide how and where to allocate that 8-figure ad spend. If you can turn thirty seconds into sustained relevance, well, you’ve probably got a pretty promising career ahead of you (or a really killer sex tape).
4. Do the Rights Thing
Sports media is about more than highlight reels and hot takes; the entire industry is funded primarily by broadcast rights revenue, not advertising dollars. This week, the increasingly lucrative, increasingly competitive battle for broadcast rights returned to the Worldwide Leader in Sports (and largest media brand in Bristol, CT).
In a heated bidding war, ESPN secured rights to the NFL Network and NFL RedZone, effectively consolidating a significant portion of the league’s image, narrative, and presentation into a single ecosystem controlled by a single corporate conglomerate. Hint: it’s the same one charging like $200 for one-day passes to their mediocre theme parks, ostensibly to recoup this profligate spend through margins on Dole Whips and old-timey paper silhouette making.
This is a pretty big structural issue. When one platform has an effective monopoly on premium properties and associated IP, it not only controls distribution but also how advertising dollars are allocated, how production budgets are set, and how supporting headcount is determined.
The NFL is already the nation’s most valuable media property, dominating the list of most-watched live broadcasts every year (unlike, say, whatever midseason replacement Fox greenlit this time around). With its new deal in place, though, the league is just another billion-dollar brand in the same IP stable as the Marvel Universe, Star Wars, and the Lizzie McGuire franchise.
Read more: Regulators OK ESPN’s deal for NFL Network, RedZone rights from NFL (ESPN)
Why It Matters for Your Career
Consolidation isn’t unique to sports media, and like other sectors of the media industry, it’s effectively an opportunity and a red flag. Larger, vertically integrated platforms require deeper infrastructure – more editors, streaming engineers, analytics specialists, sponsorship strategists, and other mundane, but necessary, high-paying corporate gigs.
Similarly, integrated ecosystems require increased content operations, digital packaging, cross-platform programming, and audience engagement. That means while the machine gets bigger, so too do the job opportunities.
This is obviously a double-edged sword. When rights are concentrated, so too is power; more inventory is controlled by fewer companies, which means fewer decision makers, stakeholders, and, in short order, staff across siloes and specialties.
If you’re in sports media, your career trajectory will be determined as much by proximity to whoever happens to control distribution as by luck, timing, or talent. Better start sucking up to the good folks over at Netflix, or start sending care packages over to the Team Disney Building.
When rights consolidate – and for the NFL and most other major sports, they look to be locked down for the indeterminate future – production centralizes, and jobs become tightly clustered, rather than evenly spread. The question is, are you positioned inside that cluster, or do you live outside of the friendly confines of the Nutmeg State?
This brings us to the part no one likes to say out loud: if you want a career in sports but don’t have the athletic skills, you’d better have the pedigree or the connections already in place.
The truth is, this is one industry where getting your foot in the door requires genes more than grit, where who you know is more important than what you know, and networking is the only talent that really matters when building a sustainable career in sports.
But then again, that’s probably true of most industries, too.
The Job Market Reality
Sports media jobs are among the most disproportionately competitive roles in the market, at least relative to total pay and projected growth.
According to BLS data, sports broadcasting, operations, production, and support roles are projected to grow more slowly than general entertainment or media jobs.
The already finite amount of open roles available generally opens only due to periodic attrition, rather than expansion- particularly for full-time roles, making the odds of working in sports almost as infinitesimal as actually playing professionally.
But even if you land a gig, much like an NFL player, there’s no guaranteed money; career longevity is limited to a couple of years on average; and the only way to make the active roster is if someone else gets cut, which rarely happens in off-the-field roles.
MEDIABISTRO SPOTLIGHT
While there aren’t a ton of open jobs in sports media or production, the good news is that the latest openings and hottest jobs from across the industry get posted every day directly on Mediabistro.
So, if you’re looking to break into the business of sports, or just trying to figure out your professional game plan, head on over to Mediabistro.com to check out thousands of new job listings from across the entire media and entertainment landscape, too.
Here’s a sneak peek at some of this week’s featured Mediabistro Jobs:
- Healthcare Copywriter at Gilleard Marketing in Laguna Hills, CA
- Multimedia Journalist at Hearst Television in Albuquerque, NM
- Product Marketing Specialist at Murmuration -Remote
- Content Specialist at Shannon Fabrics in Los Angeles, CA
- Newscast Director at Hearst Television in Milwaukee, WI
You Don’t Need to Be An Athlete to Work in Sports. Just an expensive degree.
The background of people working professionally in sports, from broadcasting to production to marketing and PR, is relatively consistent, even if their roles are anything but.
An analysis of full-time workers in the sports industry reveals some telling trend lines. Here’s how you score a spot at the career Combine:
Early access. Many professionals in sports started out as unpaid interns (like graduate assistants, in NCAA parlance) or in underpaid seasonal roles, such as event promotions or corporate ticket sales; these jobs generally pay only on commission or are limited to a few weeks or months a year.
According to BLS data, the entry-level salary in the sports industry is a whopping 22k a year (the silver lining is that’s so low it’s completely tax-free). Many professionals enter the industry before completing their education, so these roles are subsidized through college credits, student loans, or, most commonly, family support.
Let’s just say Media Row isn’t exactly crammed with first-generation college grads or people who need to be financially independent in their twenties.
Elite institutions. There are a handful of blue-chip institutions that, because of their proximity to networks and reputations, tend to act as pipelines to the pros. These include top-tier journalism schools like Indiana, Northwestern, Michigan, and Missouri, each of which has a disproportionate number of J-School grads currently employed in sports media.
They also include a handful of highly reputable, top-ranked sports management or sports business programs, such as UT Austin, UMass, Miami, and Rice – schools with prime alumni pipelines and trusted connections with the networks and leagues looking to hire.
Sure, you don’t need a college degree or academic pedigree to succeed in a sports media career, but it’s perhaps the most imperative factor in determining who gets hired for the few coveted openings on the market; referrals dominate hiring in this industry.
Where your degree came from, sadly, often matters more in the sports industry than what your reel looks like or what relevant experience you might have in related roles or industries.
Flexibility Jobs in sports are rare and highly competitive, meaning that talent often can’t afford to stick around in a single market. These roles reward those who can relocate on short notice, who have no expectations for work-life balance, who are open to the grind of constant travel, and who will live in the most expensive media markets for poverty-level pay without blinking.
If you want free time, a family, stability, or disposable income, this probably isn’t the right career for you in the first place.
Talk about trade-offs. So if you don’t check any of the standard sports industry boxes listed above, or are having trouble breaking in or landing a gig, don’t worry.
You’re probably better off doing literally anything else.
The Blind Side of Jobs in Sports
There’s no doubt that for many, sports is a fantasy job – the kind of gig you dream about your entire life. But the thing about fantasy sports is that it’s arbitrary, difficult to keep up with, and almost impossible to win, even with impeccable planning and management. And if you do beat the odds, well, the payoff is mostly pride (with a few bucks thrown in to make it interesting).
That “dream job” discount is real: early-career production assistants, editors, and reporters routinely earn less than their peers in corporate media or branded content roles; this trend continues even for more experienced positions. These roles trade mostly on prestige and passion, not pay.
As mentioned, the hours are brutal, and predictability isn’t an option. Neither is working nights, weekends, holidays, and a ton of overtime, just to keep up.
Unsurprisingly, burnout is common; live events compress stress, deadlines are tight, and public scrutiny is constant, intense, and ubiquitous. One mistake can be broadcast to millions of people, a pressure that’s constantly felt by everyone with credentials.
Stability is non-existent; rights deals shift, networks restructure, and entire production teams or sports departments can disappear when contracts move platforms or content switches to other providers. Freelancing is not a phase- in sports, it’s a structural part of how professionals make ends meet in between full-time gigs, which are mostly anything but.
Additionally, while competition for sports-related media roles is fierce, it’s even more intense for experienced professionals; the ladder narrows quickly, with many entry points leading to very few executive roles.
Advancement slows dramatically after the 3-year mark, according to Nielsen data, and the average sports media career lasts only marginally longer than that, around 4.2 years, according to the same report.
None of this is a secret; it’s just not the reality most professionals looking to break into the industry ever really hear before choosing to make the (somewhat suspect) jump.
WHY PEOPLE STILL DO IT: THE FUTURE OF JOBS IN SPORTS
Here’s the part that nobody puts in the training montage or highlight reel. Sure, there are some glamorous gigs in sports – mostly on-air roles like announcers, sideline reporters, or whoever gets to mop the lane after every NBA possession.
The former athletes with bad blazers and worse hot takes, and the professional broadcasters with great diction and bad toupees are iconic – and they’ll always exist. But the hiring curve isn’t exactly bending upwards for the aspiring Bob Ueckers or Chick Hearns of the world.
The real growth is happening off camera, off the air, and off the field. Every snap on Sunday, every pitch thrown by a journeyman pitcher making fifty million bucks, every hockey faceoff that no one really watches because, you know, it’s hockey – every one of these moments still requires a small army of support staff.
From digital producers to motion designers, from platform strategists to rights lawyers (the worst), from sponsorship analysts to partnership managers (here’s hoping they fired whoever blew the Farmer John’s-Dodger Dog deal), every moment of live drama requires decades of experience and dozens of skilled professionals. The broadcast is what the world sees; the real power and the real job opportunities stay squarely behind the scenes.
Sports is a business. And the bigger it gets, the more opportunities it should create, particularly for non-traditional platforms and creators who have more fans than the New York Jets (and are much happier, too). Sure, if you want a career in sports media, you’ve got to believe a little in the mythology of sports. Just understand that once the final whistle blows and the last piece of popcorn is swept off the concrete, the real work begins.
The business, and the paychecks, happen behind the scenes; people turning raw footage into narrative story arcs and short films, strategists mapping spot ratings and forecasting overnights, and data scientists mining stat lines for better predictions and deeper fan insights – a perpetual cycle that turns with every sports season.
Sure, it’s not nearly as romantic as everybody’s favorite gym teacher kissing everyone’s favorite English teacher after winning the Super Bowl (barf). But it’s also way more stable and far more future-proof, too.
It might be a bit cynical, but the thing is, industries run on infrastructure and scale, not nostalgia and emotional attachment. The future of sports careers has little to do with sports; instead, it belongs to the builders and creatives who understand the games are nothing more than content, a product that has to be distributed as widely and monetized as much as possible.
In other words, the business of sports media is increasingly just like any other business. It might not be glamorous, it isn’t exactly visible, and it’s not exactly stable or financially viable, either.
But for those who are willing to fight for their dream, it might not be easy, but if you build it, your sports career will come.
Play on, players. Play on.
Matt Charney
Executive Editor, Mediabistro
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