The tech giant have firmly rooted in sports media right, and they will continue to do so as long as they continue to make money. And, if 2024 was any evidence, their effect on the wide market is simply trending upwards.
Three of the lesser performers in a group of seven high-performing stocks in the technology sector—Apple ( + 33 % ), Alphabet ( + 37 % ) and Amazon ( + 50 % ), all of which have partnerships with the sports industry —far outpaced the S&amp, P 500 ( + 23 % ). Along with Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta and Tesla, those companies, often referred to as the” Beautiful Seven”, accounted for more than half the profits of the entire population of 500 publicly traded companies.
Nevertheless, the stock market had a strong 2024, yet as Americans worried about the business. The S&amp, P 500 hit an all-time substantial on 57 different times and rose 23 % during the year, with interest rate reductions, declining prices and rising earnings among the leading elements.

During a time of robust stock market performance, those seven big tech tickers make up roughly 35 % of the total market capitalization of the S&amp, P 500, up from approximately 30 % last year. For the most part of the past 40 years, the top seven stocks ‘ contributions to the index had been largely around or below 20 %. It has risen considerably from 15 % on New Year’s Day in 2015, and skyrocketed starting in 2020.
Apple, specifically, with a market cap of$ 3.8 trillion, accounted for 7.65 % of the S&amp, P 500 at the start of 2025—the highest percentage for a single stock since at least 1980, according to Yahoo! Finance. Up until Apple reached the$ 1 trillion milestone in 2018, there had never even been a$ 1 trillion American company.
Apple is one of the large tech companies that has signed 10-year partnerships with MLS in recent years and is one of several large tech companies that has done so in recent years. The tech giant pays$ 250 million a year for its rights, a drop in the bucket compared to its$ 383 billion in 2023 revenues.
In 2022, Alphabet also entered the sports industry by awarding$ 2 billion annually to make YouTube the exclusive home of the NFL Sunday Ticket. Google’s parent company earned$ 307 billion in 2023 revenues.
Amazon, though, was the true pioneer in the space back in 2021 when it bought the exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football, which costs it just a tick above$ 1 billion per year. Jeff Bezos ‘ company, which brought in$ 575 billion last year, has since one-upped its competitors by landing a share of the next NBA rights package worth roughly$ 1.8 billion per season from 2025-26 through 2035-36.

The idea of a tech company streaming primetime football seemed strange when Amazon started only broadcasting NFL games a few years ago. Now, it’s normal. Even though they were unavailable on traditional TV, both of the 2024 NFL Christmas games that were shown on Netflix were ranked among the 50 most watched U.S. broadcasts of the year.