What a difference 10 years makes! Fast forward to 2008, and football fandom has evolved into a full-contact, full-immersion experience with the field of play spanning an array of media not yet conceived in the 20th century. If anyone doubts the popularity of NFL football in the U.S., check the stats. Nielsen Sports numbers show that, while fans may punt on other sports, NFL’s mass appeal delivers consistent TV viewing numbers, capturing between 10% and 12% of total U.S. TV households year after year.

While the Super Bowl may never again deliver an audience spike to rival the peak 49.1 rating of 1982, it still consistently ranks as the most-watched TV program of the year.

Full field coverage
Today’s fan can kick off the morning with satellite radio coverage of NFL rankings and post-game shows; eat breakfast to TiVo’d excerpts from the weekend’s games; jump on the Internet to check fantasy league team standings; surf sports blogs to weigh in on the issues; join the 71.88 million people visiting online sports sites; download stats to their PDA on the commute to work; and more traditionally, re-hash games around the water cooler. If traveling or in a blackout area, our stalwart fan can access the local team’s game feed via Slingbox from anywhere in the world.

Among the gaming community, there is clearly one gold standard for football titles, the Madden NFL series. Nielsen Games tracked awareness and purchase intent for football titles, and Madden NFL 2006, 2007 and 2008 won in a route on both criteria.

Immaculate reception
Not only are there more ways to immerse oneself in the NFL experience, but the quality of those connections has vastly improved as well. High definition television (HDTV) delivers immaculate reception at such a high degree of resolution that fans can practically count the pores on the pigskin.

According to a Nielsen SportsQUEST survey, die-hard NFL fans comprise fully 21% of HDTV viewers who have sports programming packages, almost double the next largest fan block (Major League Baseball). A contributing factor is the fact that Sunday Ticket, DirecTV’s NFL programming package available in high def, enables viewers to see out-of-market games.

Despite the plethora of football media choices, blind spots exist. Chief among them: the NFL Network. In 2006, the network opted to carry eight regular season games. Due to a carriage dispute with local cable operators, only 38% of U.S. TV homes can receive the channel, forcing eager enthusiasts into crowded sports bars which provide the game via satellite. Unfortunately, this year those blocked games included the vaunted Green Bay vs. Dallas and Giants vs. Patriots match-ups.

However, where NFL fans have a will there is a way. With the Patriots looking to become the first team in 30 years to finish the season undefeated on the NFLN, the league announced an unprecedented agreement to simulcast the NFLN feed on CBS and NBC. The result was a thrilling contest, the highest rated regular season game in 13 years, and evidence of the power that the NFL and its fans have to make content available to the masses.

A big ticket
NFL fans represent more than the price of season tickets and game-day merchandise. Smart marketers appreciate the full value of NFL fans who are getting better educated and wealthier every year. In 2000, roughly 28% of hard core NFL fans held a college degree, and almost 12% earned more than $100,000 annually. Seven years later, the percentage of college grads among avid fans is 38%, and 25% earn six figures. Translation: more fans earning more money to pay for giant flat-screen TVs capable of receiving premium high def sports packages like Sunday Ticket.

Research by Nielsen Homescan across 121 consumer product categories found that NFL fans generated more dollar sales than any other major U.S. sport across all categories. In 97 of the 121 categories tracked, NFL fans spent as much as, if not more, than the average U.S. household.

FANtasy facts
Geography used to be the primary determinant of football team loyalties. All that changed with the advent of fantasy football, which created a cadre of fans whose primary allegiance ascribes to their fantasy team in lieu of the hometown favorite. Even that workplace standby, the office football pool, has been updated courtesy of the Internet and Websites like Yahoo and CBS Sportsline.

Gone are the handwritten picks and Excel spreadsheets, replaced by slick software that makes it easy for anyone to participate and follow the action. So popular are the Web-based fantasy football sites, that Nielsen Online discovered more than 11.6 million unique users logging more than 1.2 billion minutes in this alternative sporting universe. That’s a considerable increase from the same period last year, especially for FOXSports.com, which achieved a 94% increase in unique audience: ESPN.com, which acquired 48% more players; and Fantasy Sports Ventures, which realized a very real 31% increase in traffic.

Online audibles
If an NFL coach, player or sportswriter wants to know what fans are thinking, there’s no better way than to check out the backfield “buzz,” or blog volume, on the Internet. The following analysis by Nielsen BuzzMetrics plots blog postings on a weekly basis from the inception of the 2007–2008 regular season. Chatter goes airborne around big news events like the Patriots defeating the Cowboys in a rare 5-0 team pairing, or the Patriots spy scandal, the hottest Web story of the season.

Low points on the grid indicate diminished NFL-related traffic on Saturdays, when college football results displace interest in professional performances. Internet-based video games, team and fan Web sites prove attractive to the much-coveted and lucrative 18–25 demographic.

The ad zone
For advertisers, the sports end game is all about advertising visibility and conversions. Super Bowl ads especially are about more than sales; they’re about corporate image and marketing primacy.

That said, sales responsiveness had better move the needle when costs for a 30-second spot soar into the stratosphere. The inaugural 1967 Super Bowl charged $40,000 for a 30-second spot; 40 years later, that same time increment was valued at $2.6 million. With good reason: football moves product. According to Nielsen, category sales for the two weeks surrounding last year’s Super Bowl was blistering, with coolers posting a 25% sales increase, followed by dairy snacks and spreads (22%), crackers (15%), and beer, snacks and frozen pizza snacks (13%).

Viewed through another filter, that of incremental dollar sales, snacks snared an additional $33.4 million dollars at Super Bowl time; beer poured on $20.7 million extra; cheese sliced off $18.9 million more, followed by carbonated beverages’ $18.6 million gain, which was more than spillover. All in all, fan interest in football appears to be rivaled only by marketers’ interest in the fiscal standing of that fan base.

Check out more insights from Tom Ziangas on Nielsen's "Road to the Big Game" blog

Check out more insights from Tom Pirovano on Nielsen's "Road to the Big Game" blog