The first Citation Share Index of all 32 NFL franchises. 750 queries across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. The team that just won the Super Bowl ranks 12th. Five franchises got zero. Brand authority compounds. On-field performance evaporates the moment the next Sunday begins.
295 first-place mentions across 750 queries. The Cowboys' Citation Share Score is 100.0. The #2 franchise (Chiefs) scores 51.6. No second-place finisher comes within striking distance.
For the first time since 2014, Kansas City did not make the postseason. The brand built around Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and Andy Reid did not flinch in AI search. Citation rank #2, on-field rank #23. A 21-position gap — the largest positive gap in the league.
The Seattle Seahawks beat New England 29-13 on February 8, 2026. They tied for the NFL's best regular-season record. They lead the league in points allowed per game. In AI citations, they rank 12th — a -11 gap between performance and visibility. AI engines have not caught up to the championship.
The Jets, Saints, Colts, Cardinals, and Vikings — five franchises with a combined enterprise value north of $28 billion — appear in essentially none of the 50 prompts a fan, sponsor, free agent, or institutional investor would ask an AI engine.
Minnesota ranks 13th in 2025 on-field performance and dead last in Citation Share. The 19-position gap is the most extreme performance-vs-visibility disconnect in professional football. A nine-figure brand asset operating in near-total AI silence.
A $10B+ asset. -22 value gap. Any sponsor paying market rate for Jets inventory is paying for traditional reach and getting near-zero discoverability inside ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity. The same pattern holds for the Commanders and Bears.
Pittsburgh punches 13 positions above its Forbes valuation rank. Same story: Bengals (+15), Jaguars (+12), Lions (+11). These are franchises whose AI visibility outruns their enterprise value — a real but invisible asset on the balance sheet.
Sponsorship inventory is priced on attention. Attention now flows through AI engines. Citation Share is the metric that decides whether a sponsor renews, a free agent signs, or a fan picks a team. The franchises that build the infrastructure first will define the next decade of NFL communications economics.
Citation Share 50+ · Brand authority survives any season
| Rank | Franchise | Citation Share | Fan | Sponsor | FA | Business | On-Field | Perf Gap | Forbes | Val Gap |
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Five franchises got zero. The Super Bowl champion ranks twelfth. The team that missed the playoffs ranks second. AI engines aren't broken — they're showing you what brand authority actually looks like when you strip out a single season. The franchises that build the citation infrastructure first will own the next decade of NFL communications economics. The rest will be paying for it.
Sponsorship inventory is priced on attention. Attention now runs through ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews — not the broadcast and not the timeline. The Jets are the sixth-most valuable franchise in football and twenty-eighth in citations. Some sponsor is paying full freight for a brand that AI engines barely return. Build the infrastructure before the renewal — not during it.
Franchise-by-franchise breakdowns. Engine-level cuts. Prompt-by-prompt scoring. CSV + methodology PDF. Used for sponsorship valuation, free-agent intelligence, and franchise communications strategy.