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&P 500, up from approximately 30% last year. The contribution of the top seven stocks to the index had hovered around or below 20% for most of the past 40 years. […]
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&P 500, up from approximately 30% last year. The contribution of the top seven stocks to the index had hovered around or below 20% for most of the past 40 years. 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 .8 trillion, accounted for 7.65% of the S&P 500 at the start of 2025—the highest percentage for a single stock since at least 1980, according to Yahoo! Finance. There had never even been a trillion American company until Apple reached the milestone in 2018.
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&P 500 (+23%). Along with Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta and Tesla, those stocks, sometimes referred to as the “Magnificent Seven,” accounted for more than half the gains of the entire cohort of 500 publicly traded companies.
Overall, the stock market had a strong 2024, even as Americans worried about the economy. The S&P 500 hit an all-time high on 57 different days and rose 23% during the year, with interest rate cuts, declining inflation and rising profits among the driving factors.
Alphabet also plunged into sports in 2022 by dishing out billion annually to make YouTube the exclusive home of NFL Sunday Ticket. Google’s parent company earned 7 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 billion per year. Jeff Bezos’ company, which brought in 5 billion last year, has since one-upped its competitors by landing a share of the next NBA rights package worth roughly .8 billion per season from 2025-26 through 2035-36.
Apple is one of several large tech companies to strike media rights deals with major sports properties in recent years when it inked a 10-year partnership with MLS in 2022. The tech giant pays 0 million a year for its rights, a drop in the bucket compared to its 3 billion in 2023 revenues.
The tech giants have planted their feet in sports media rights—and they are here to stay, especially as long as they continue to rake in money. And, if 2024 was any indication, their influence on the broad market is only trending upward.
When Amazon began exclusively broadcasting NFL games a few years ago, the notion of a tech company streaming primetime football seemed bizarre. Now, it’s normal. Both of the 2024 NFL Christmas games broadcast on Netflix ranked among the 50 most-watched U.S. broadcasts of 2024 despite not being available to viewers on traditional TV.
