Commissioner Pete Rozelle, the man who modernized the NFL beginning in the early 1960s, used to tell his staff, “Remember, we kick off every Sunday at 1 p.m.”
That was back in the days when the National Football League thought of itself as an actual football league, although Rozelle did start Monday and Sunday night football and even experimented with Thursday night football but stopped it when he didn’t think it was good for the league.
As Ken Belson, who has covered the business of the NFL for The New York Times, explains in his book, “Every Day is Sunday,” the NFL is now more of a business than a football league. It is now like a multi-billion dollar entertainment conglomerate and is going global with games played around the world.
The book profiles the three men who played key roles in making it a big business – Jerry Jones (owner of the Cowboys), Robert Kraft (owner of the Patriots), and commissioner Roger Goodell.
The three have very different personalities but the common goal of making making a lot of money. Jones is a master of marketing and often tangled with the other owners even to the extent of threatening to sue them over a Goodell contract extension. Kraft is close to Goodell and is often called the shadow commissioner. And Goodell is a master at cutting expenses and increasing revenue. He locked the players out in 2011 to give the owners a bigger share of the revenue. Kraft also played a big role in reaching an agreement to end the 2011 lockout and even attending meetings when he was mourning the loss of his first wife. And in the latest money making idea, owners can sell equity in their teams to get more cash.
Another change is the concept of spending money to promote the league is no longer a priority. For example, Rozelle used to host a party on Friday night before the Super Bowl for at least 3,000 guests, including sponsors, executives and the media. The tickets for the party were free and almost as coveted as Super Bowl tickets. Goodell decided it was too expensive. Ditto for a party after the game Sunday night. Rozelle also used to think the the TV networks were partners and should make make a profit on televising the games. Now the idea is the networks can use the games for promotional purposes and the league does not care if they make money televising them.
Belson also chronicles how Rupert Murdoch, the founder of the FOX network, helped make the NFL what it is today. His four-year, $1.58 billion bid for the NFC package in 1994 that CBS failed to match showed the show the growth potential for the league. The $395 million a year bid far surpassed the $250 million CBS was willing to pay. A new day had dawned in the NFL, and it has kept growing ever since.
Now the question is where does the league go from here. Belson points out that Jones and Kraft are in their 80s, and Goodell is 66. They don’t show any interest in retiring but eventually a new generation will take over. And times are changing. As more billionaire owners buy their teams, they want more revenue. There may be more labor strife in the future as owners try to get a bigger piece of the pie. And with NBC paying $27 billion for an 11-year deal, they will want more programming for their various platforms.
And there are other issues coming up. The NFL makes more money not because it is drawing more viewers but because — in the era of social media — the other network shows don’t draw the audiences they once did. So the NFL staying the same makes it more valuable. The TV ratings haven’t increased since 2015 (when they averaged 18.1 million viewers), although they could increase somewhat this year because of the new way Nielsen does the ratings. And then the NFL has the problem of having enough good matchups to fill all their stand-alone slots with games on Thursday, Sunday and Monday night, plus a doubleheader game on Sunday. And the global games that start at 9:30 a.m. in the East and 6:30 a.m. on the West Coast (Goodell is talking about increasing them). And then there is the debate about going to an 18-game schedule, which is likely coming sooner than later. And then the TV industry itself is rapidly changing. Will the networks continue to pay higher numbers? If the NFL goes more to streaming, will fans continue to pay more for each streaming services?
The NFL is now on top, but where do they go from here? Is there a fear of overexposure and slower growth, or will the league continue to bring in much more revenue and remain a money-making machine?
In just five years, Belson may have enough material for another book.
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