In a single country, possibly not. Overall, it'd be amazing if it didn't. If comparing individual leagues, you also have to factor in the TV market. None of the richer nations have anything like the USA's 300 million population, and a game with loads of room for ad breaks ads up to a whole lot of advertising revenue. If England's population was 300 million, the domestic tv rights would be worth 6 times as much. Would that eclipse the NFL's tv deal? I'm not sure, but it wouldn't be a million miles away. Also note that although the premiership sells its rights around the world, overseas rights don't go for much. The bulk of tv money, even for the premiership, is still domestic.
The biggest reason is that every NFL game is essentially a 3-hour infomercial. That's followed by the fact America is the world's largest economy. I'm not so sure about your #2. Parity doesn't help much. Otherwise why is the EPL the most popular football league in the world? The Mexican league is probably the most similar to the NFL, using playoffs and giving most teams a decent chance to win a championship. But I can't say I even know one non-Mexican who rates that league as their favorite.
When the rights for sports are sold to television stations a lot of the money paid for sports like NFL and the NBA come down to the fact that they have a lot of stoppages so ads can be flooded into the breaks whereas in football there are no stoppages in the games to allow for any ads besides the HT break. I'm not sure exactly how the business side of the NFL works, but i assume that a lot of the money made from the TV Deals and marketing etc are dispersed between the teams??? Also don't forget that most football clubs have to fund their own stadia, while American football franchises have the government get their citizens to pay taxes for theirs.
In the latest deal, overseas rights are worth about 25% of the total. The Mexican league is second rate though, and in a poor country. You'd have to introduce parity in a top rich European league to see the effect. If Wigan had the same chance of winning the league as Chelsea they'd probably get bigger crowds. And the TV ratings might go up if there were more than four teams that armchair fans wanted to watch, and if the big four didn't win so many games so predictably.
Go back to the 40s/50s, when there was a salary cap (albeit per player rather than per squad) as there were still differences Code: Division One 1948-1949 Club Average vs '48 1 Newcastle United 53.839 NEW 2 Arsenal 51.478 - 6,2% 3 Manchester United 48.808 -11,1% 4 Aston Villa 47.320 14,2% 5 Chelsea 46.362 - 2,6% 6 Sunderland 45.220 5,4% 7 Everton 45.138 2,1% 8 Liverpool 44.031 - 0,6% 9 Wolverhampton Wanderers 43.690 10,2% 10 Charlton Athletic 40.216 10,9% 11 Manchester City 38.699 - 9,4% 12 Birmingham City 38.453 NEW 13 Portsmouth 37.082 18,8% 14 Sheffield United 34.387 37,0% 15 Middlesbrough 34.292 1,2% 16 Bolton Wanderers 34.113 16,0% 17 Preston North End 33.226 12,6% 18 Burnley 30.290 - 9,9% 19 Stoke City 29.948 - 5,2% 20 Derby County 29.798 10,2% 21 Blackpool 24.882 - 1,3% 22 Huddersfield Town 22.151 -13,3% Total 38.792 7,4%
Still a lot less variation in attendances as there is today. We'd never get 34k today, even if it was free.
Its only because 32 NFL teams divide revenue and fans in a country of 300 million people. Soccer teams have about 1000x more competitions. If there were even only 200 soccer teams theyd be way richer than those 32 nfl teams.
Another point, perhaps it was previously mentioned: Football has countless breaks throughout the game that allows for so many advertisements. If you sat down and watched an american football game you'd probably watch 3 dozen commercials and that's not even counting half-time.
The NFL makes so much money off of so much crap it's ridiculous. Did you know that the new New York Giants stadium (in new jersey) will have season ticket holders pay 10,000 dollars just for the right to buy a season ticket? That the University of Phoenix paid the Arizona Cardinals 154 million dollars just to call the Stadium Arizona plays in "University of Phoenix Stadium"? A Super Bowl commercial costs 1 million dollars for 30 seconds? They have money coming out of their ears. Doesn't surprise me the least. And it's not like their tapping a global fanbase. The Steelers have fans in every city but Man U claims to have 330 million fans. If everyone game 10 bucks they'd be worth more than all NFL teams.
Thats what surprised me so much though at first thought, the NFL being only played in one country and having most of their fans restricted in that country having richer teams (in terms of value) than the most global sport with the most fans worldwide.
Being a global sport just means there are teams all over the entire world so the money's spread out a lot more. It also means that clubs can't get away with ripping people off in the same way if there's more competition.
As Yanez and other have mentioned. A lot of it is down to the number of professional clubs. Think of how big the Champions League is with those 32 teams. Now if those 32 clubs were the only Professional Clubs in the world then they would all be much, much bigger, as all football fans would support one of these teams. Similarly if there were hundreds of professional GridIron teams around the world then the 32 biggest Clubs would be much smaller as loyalties and subsequent revenues would be divided.
Accumulate the total value of every single football club in the world then compare it to total value of every NFL franchise to see which sport truly is the richest. I don't think i need to say who will come out on top yeh?