The NFL announced on Friday that the 2024 Salary Cap will be $255.4 million per team, per Tom Pelissero of NFL Network.

That’s both a record amount for the NFL, and a record year-over-year increase of nearly $31 million. There will also be an additional $74 million payment per NFL team for player benefits, which includes performance-based pay and benefits for retired players.

The amount goes well beyond all recent estimates for what the NFL salary cap would look like in the coming 2024 season. The league’s salary cap was expected to increase to more than $240 million in the 2024 season. With fans returning to games following the COVID pandemic, the amount of money in pro football is increasing.

TV contracts have also been solid in the last few years for the league. That has all contributed to a surging revenue stream. Last year’s salary cap per team was just under $225 million, which was also an increase from about $208 million in 2022.

The NFL and the NFL Players Association negotiate to set the salary cap. The player’s union works to make sure there’s not a large one-year spike in the cap that could benefit a smaller group of free agents who are looking for new contracts in that year.

Something similar happened in the NBA in 2016 that saw multiple teams give out lucrative contracts to players that hadn’t necessarily shown that they deserved the amount of money they received. That caused several teams to end up tied to marginal players for multiple years with no amnesty clause available.