Nepotism in sports can be fun and entertaining for fans, but can ruin once in a lifetime opportunities for other players.
This past weekend during the 2025 NFL Draft, we saw how nepotism can benefit leagues with revenue and viewership.
Shedeur Sanders, son of NFL Hall-of-Famer Deion Sanders, was a projected first round pick during the draft, but fell to the fifth round where he was drafted by the Cleveland Browns with the 144th overall pick, according to an April 26, ESPN article.
This created a story line and narrative that intrigued fans and increased viewership.
Shedeur sliding to fifth round was unprecedented, as he was projected to be at least a second round pick, showing that teams didn’t want to risk a pick on him as he can come off as arrogant due to his overconfidence, as well as the media circus surrounding him, according to a Fox Sports article.
During the later rounds of the draft , typically there are rating dips, but the NFL saw an increase in viewership as fans were anticipating who would take Shedeur Sanders.
This year's draft had an average 7.4 million viewers for the second and third rounds, and was the second all-time on Day 2 of draft coverage with 2020 having 8.2 million viewers in, according to a Yahoo! Article that was published on Monday.
Despite Sanders being a very late round pick, his jersey ranks top three in sales, behind his Colorado teammate, Travis Hunter and first overall pick Cam Ward, over the weekend as well, according to a Sports Illustrated article.
Although leagues can benefit from nepotism, it can create drama as these players are often looked at as being favored over others who have better playing abilities.
A similar case is Bronny James, the son of NBA legend and Los Angeles Lakers star, LeBron James.
In the 2024 NBA draft, Bronny James was a prospect coming out of University of Southern California where he averaged 4.8 points per game, 2.8 rebounds and 2.1 assists, according to stats from Sports Reference.
With much better players still on the board the Lakers selected him in the second round with the 55th overall pick, the same team as his father, according to stats from the same source.
Bronny being drafted to the Lakers was clearly prearranged because of who his father is and where he went, possibly ruining opportunities for others who are more worthy of the position.
During the draft process, Bronny’s agent, Rich Paul was reportedly telling teams not to draft him or else he’d sign and play in Australia, causing a lot of criticism if he should even be drafted at all, according to a June 28, 2024 Yahoo! article.
These cases where strings are being pulled in order to favor a person despite playing ability is why nepotism in sports isn’t fair for other players and why leagues should take more action.
However, there are instances where there are successful nepotism families like the NFL coaching tree of Mike Shanahan, with two Super Bowl wins under him and his son Kyle Shanahan with three Super Bowl appearances, according to a Feb. 10, 2024 The Sporting News article.
Despite the success of the Shanahans, nepotism in the NFL for coaches is still bad for the league, as in 2022, 12 of the 34 NFL head coaches counting two interim coaches are related to current or former coaches in the league, according to a Nov. 22, 2022 USA Today article.
And at least 93 coaches have a father, son or brother who is a current or former NFL coach and 76 coaches with those connections, 81.7% are white, according to the same source.
Seeing your favorite player’s kid making it to the professional level can be exciting as a fan, but depending on the circumstances, it can ruin why sports are enjoyable and fun as it’s just supposed to be based on merit.
Nepotism should stay far away from sports as it does more harm than good by removing merit, creating egos and taking away opportunities to those more deserving with less.
