The Latino audience is key to the growth of the NFL in the US and abroad

Earlier this month, a well-known musician performed at a Kansas City Chiefs game as the National Football League continues its attempt to reach a new audience.

But this time it wasn't Taylor Swift cheering on Travis Kelce, like the pop star did at the Kansas City games, leading to a spike in viewership.

It was Puerto Rican rapper Daddy Yankee, known for hits like “Gasolina” and “Rompe.” He attended a Monday night football game at Arrowhead Stadium and spent time with Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco. Pacheco, of Puerto Rican descent, let Daddy Yankee try on both of his Super Bowl rings.

The moment came as part of the NFL's “Por La Cultura” campaign, which is in its fourth year and is a key element of the league's effort to grow its Latino and Spanish-speaking audience.

The NFL is known for its explosive ratings and is one of the most dominant sports in terms of viewership on both traditional television and streaming. A Nielsen report earlier this week showed that soccer boosted ratings in September.

However, the league is still eager to continue growing, both globally and within the U.S. A key aspect of that expansion is the Hispanic audience, league and media officials told CNBC.

“I think when you have a successful product you're kind of tied to your success, right? I mean, there's very little growth that [the NFL] can really achieve within the US regular American [English]English-speaking population,” said Olek Loewenstein, global president of sports at TelevisaUnivision.

He noted that the Hispanic population “is one of the largest, if not the largest, growing and youngest demographic groups in the United States.”

Marissa Solis, senior vice president of global brand and consumer marketing for the NFL, said she joined the league three years ago to “leverage our growing audiences.” For the NFL, he said, this means three groups: viewers 35 and younger, of whom Solis notes the majority are Latino; women; and Latinos.

“It is mathematically impossible for the league to grow without Latinos,” Solis said. “This audience is critical to our growth. And it's critical to global growth, because there's a lot of cross-border connection and pride, and fandom crosses borders.”

When it comes to sports in the United States, Hispanic audiences prefer soccer, followed by baseball and boxing, Loewenstein said. The NFL is still working to build its brand in the global market, dominated by football and other sports.

“I think the NFL is one of the sports with the greatest growth and explosion among Hispanics,” Loewenstein said.

At the start of the season, the NFL expanded its reach to non-Spanish-speaking Latino audiences and hosted a game in Brazil for the first time as it brings more matchups to international locations. The game was broadcast exclusively on Comcast's Peacock and was the second most-watched live event for the streaming platform after an NFL playoff game earlier this year.

Solis said that four years ago, when the Por La Cultura effort began, about 31 million Latinos in the United States considered themselves NFL fans, and that number has since increased to 40 million.

While the campaign has focused on topics such as how the Latino community expresses its fandom and the stories of players like Pacheco and New England Patriots cornerback Christian González, Solís said expanding broadcasts into the Spanish language has been a big help. .

The NFL has more than 75 Spanish-language broadcasts available this season, the league said.

“All of those efforts have led to massive growth in fandom,” he said.

global paramountThe CBS network broadcast this year's Super Bowl between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs, but since the network does not have a Spanish-language counterpart, it licensed those rights in the United States and Mexico to TelevisaUnivision.

The Super Bowl on TelevisaUnivision's free-to-air network broke records, the company said, with an average of 2.3 million viewers across all its platforms, the largest audience for a Spanish-language broadcast of a Super Bowl.

Still, it was a small contribution to the 2024 Super Bowl's total of 123.4 million viewers.

“Seventy percent of the people who had watched the Super Bowl had not seen any other playoff game that year,” said TelevisaUnivision's Lowenstein.

The first Super Bowl to be broadcast in Spanish was in 2015 on the Fox Deportes cable television network. In 2022, NBCUniversal's Telemundo broadcast the Super Bowl for the first time on a Spanish-language free-to-air network.

While having a Super Bowl broadcast in Spanish is not a component of the NFL's media rights agreements, it has become a top priority as the NFL looks to expand availability, according to the league.

This was underscored earlier this week when Fox Deportes and Telemundo announced that both networks would broadcast the Super Bowl in February. The two networks will “provide the broadest Spanish-language distribution” in the history of the Super Bowl in the United States, and the networks will produce separate broadcasts.

Since the 2022 Super Bowl broadcast, Telemundo has seen “significant growth in our viewership” of the NFL, said Joaquín Duro, executive vice president of sports for NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises.

Telemundo broadcasts every “Sunday Night Football” game in Spanish on both TV and Peacock. He noted that while the core audience still watches traditional television, streaming is becoming increasingly important. “This is helping us attract younger, more tech-savvy viewers,” Duro said.

Like the NFL, Telemundo Deportes highlights the stories of Hispanic players. It has also expanded its coverage around NFL events with an on-site presence at games and a greater variety of interviews, Duro added.

“I love the change, the evolution, the expansion of the NFL,” said Rolando Cantú, former NFL player and analyst on “TNF en Español” and Telemundo Deportes' broadcast of “Sunday Night Football.”

Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.