Which U.S. City Is The Best Place To Be An NFL Fan?

Following an NFL team is rarely just about the football. Ticket prices, hotel costs, and travel all vary hugely from city to city, and some NFL loyalists get a far better deal than others for backing a winning side.

Gambling.com, a trusted guide to US betting sites, scored all 32 NFL cities on what a matchday actually costs and delivers, weighing ticket prices, hotel rates, stadium size, Super Bowl pedigree, recent form and fanbase size to find out which cities offer the best value and which come at the steepest price.

Dallas came out on top. Detroit finished last, with a get-in price six times higher than Nashville's.

The cheapest way to get into an NFL game is $64. The most expensive costs $385.63.

Dallas tops the ranking with a 4.12 out of 5 score, backed by the league's second-largest fanbase at 9.3 million and one of its biggest stadiums.

Detroit finishes 32nd with a 1.94 score, weighed down by the NFL's most expensive get-in price at $385.63, six times Nashville's $64.00.

Hotel rates range from $126.81 per night in Atlanta to $594.60 per night in Denver, a 4.7-fold gap.

Buffalo has the best five-season record in the league at 70.6% but finishes 17th, held back by the sixth-most expensive tickets and no Super Bowl win.

How this was scored

Every one of the 32 NFL cities was scored across six equally weighted measures: stadium capacity, Super Bowl wins, win percentage over the last five seasons, average get-in ticket price, average hotel cost per night, and combined social media following.

Each measure is normalized across the 32 teams so the best score is 1 and the worst is 0, with the two cost measures inverted so cheaper scores are higher. The six values are averaged and rescaled to a score out of 5.

The result is a comparative index rather than a total cost of attending a game. It tells you how each city compares to the other 31, not what a weekend will cost you.

Dallas comes top, Detroit comes last

Dallas scores 4.12 out of 5. The Cowboys have the second-largest combined Instagram and X following in the league at 9.3 million, behind only New England's 9.6 million, and one of the largest stadiums in the NFL, with a capacity of 80,000. A $169.63 get-in price is close to the league average, and only hotel costs of $307.59 per night pull the score down.

San Francisco is second on 3.79, helped by the cheapest hotels of any top-ten city at $173.02 a night in Santa Clara. Green Bay is third on 3.67, where the size of Lambeau Field offsets a get-in price of $252.88, the fifth dearest in the league.

At the other end, Detroit finishes 32nd on 1.94. The Lions have a respectable five-season record at 56.5%, but the most expensive ticket in the NFL at $385.63 and the fourth-dearest hotels at $436.09 a night sink the score.

The number most fans care about

The get-in price is the cheapest available seat, and it is the widest spread in the study.

Nashville is the cheapest way into an NFL game at $64.00. New Orleans is next at $66.63, then Jacksonville at $71.63, Cleveland at $73.00, and Indianapolis at $73.13.

At the top, Detroit's $385.63 is six times Nashville's price for the equivalent seat. Philadelphia is the second-cheapest at $318.63; Las Vegas is third at $281.00; and Chicago is fourth at $262.75.

Hotels vary almost as much. Atlanta averages $126.81 per night, the cheapest of any NFL city, compared to Denver's $594.60. Cleveland is the second dearest at $493.08, and Philadelphia is third at $474.20.

Cheap tickets do not guarantee a good score, though. Of the five cheapest cities to get into, only New Orleans makes the top half of the table. Nashville finishes 26th, Cleveland 29th.

Does winning make a city a better or worse value?

Both, and the direction depends on which number you look at.

Winning does push ticket prices up. Across the 32 teams, five-season win percentage and get-in price move together, with a correlation of 0.42. The better the team, the more it costs to watch them.

But winning teams still score better overall, with a correlation of 0.50 between win percentage and final score. The top ten cities average a 55.9% record against the bottom ten's 41.4%, and they are cheaper to get into as well, averaging $158.14 against $171.39.

The exceptions are the interesting part. Buffalo has the best record in the league over five seasons at 70.6% and finishes 17th, with the sixth-most expensive tickets and no Super Bowl win. Philadelphia is second on form at 69.4% and finishes 13th, carrying the second-dearest tickets and third-dearest hotels in the study.

So for those two, price does cancel out performance. Across the league as a whole, it does not.

What the ranking is really measuring

Worth being straight about this. Of the six measures, fanbase size tracks the final score most closely, with a correlation of 0.69, well ahead of recent form at 0.50 and stronger than either cost measure.

The top 10 cities have an average of 6.3 million combined followers. The bottom ten average 3.0 million. That is a real finding about which teams do well on this index, and it means a well-supported team in a moderately priced city will tend to beat a cheaper city with a smaller following.

If you are choosing a game purely on cost, the ticket and hotel columns will serve you better than the overall score.

Methodology

All 32 NFL teams and their home cities scored across six equally weighted measures: stadium capacity, Super Bowl wins, win percentage, average get-in ticket price, average hotel cost, and combined social media following.

Each measure is normalized across the 32 teams, so the best score is 1 and the worst is 0, with the two cost measures inverted, so a lower cost score is higher. The six values are averaged and rescaled to a score out of 5. Teams with the same score share a rank. The full model, including every team's component scores, is available on request.

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