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We are now more than two months removed from the Super Bowl, but the seeds for capturing a Super Bowl LXI in 2027 could be sown for one team next week at the NFL Draft in Pittsburgh, PA. The three-day draft is much more of an experience than teams simply filling out their roster, and a notable share of Americans say they’ll be tuning in this year.
Understanding this audience requires moving beyond assumptions and third-party inferences. Using consumer-declared data, CivicScience identifies who is watching, where they are engaging, and how their team’s picks influence their sentiment for the season ahead.
New CivicScience data show 39% of U.S. adults plan to watch at least some of the NFL Draft this year. While this percentage is only up slightly from pre-pandemic levels, Americans are notably much more likely to watch at least the first two days of the draft compared to the 2019 NFL draft: 27% now say they will watch at least the first two days of the draft, up from 18% back in 2019. This percentage jumps significantly among Hispanic Americans (34%), Black Americans (39%), and Gen Z adults aged 18-29 (45%).
As CivicScience has recently highlighted, “watching” doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone – this is also ringing true for NFL Draft content. While TV will be the leading medium for consuming draft content, usage of the television screen still varies along expected generational lines, with those 55+ leading the way. Fragmentation abounds beyond TV, notably social media, which narrowly outpaces streaming as the second-most common place to consume and share draft content. When it comes to mobile app and site content (non-social media), Millennials aged 30-44 lead the way, while Gen Z sets the pace in all other non-TV content types, namely social media.
Speaking of fragmentation, those watching the draft say they’re tuning in for more than just seeing what their favorite team does. The sport-driven motivations are well represented, but entertainment and social media relevance are cracking the top five among an audience with a broader range of investment than pure fandom. That’s true even among those who very closely follow the NFL, among whom 37% cite entertainment, and 33% cite social media relevance, suggesting the draft’s cultural pull isn’t just a casual-fan phenomenon.
Still, what a draft viewer’s favorite team does at the draft is likely to affect their viewership in 2027. Roughly one in five (19%) of viewers tell CivicScience that what their favorite team does at the draft will have ‘a lot’ of impact on their interest in watching next season. An additional 32% say it will have at least ‘a little’ impact, though nearly half say it won’t factor in at all, suggesting that for many fans, viewership intent is largely unconditional (among those with a favorite team).
The NFL Draft has transformed into a multifaceted cultural event where social media relevance and entertainment value now rival traditional fandom. These shifting dynamics underscore the importance of declared data in capturing how different demographics truly engage with the sport beyond the TV screen.
