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Seriously sports
- The NFL and Front Office Sports have announced new content licensing partnerships.
- Critics have suggested that media with financial ties with the NFL may avoid negative coverage in order to protect their relationship.
- Previous examples show that the NFL has influenced content such as ESPN’s “Playmakers” and Bob Costas’ departure from NBC’s Super Bowl coverage.
The totalitarian regime was able to learn one or two things from the NFL.
The league is the most powerful entity in the country. Sorry, DC politician, but you know it’s true – and everyone wants it. Broadcasting station. sponsor. vendor. A company that makes products. A company that sells products. And many times.
The NFL knows this. I also know that you can use that power to close down small criticisms about the league.
The NFL and front office sports announced a content licensing agreement on Tuesday that will provide access to the sports business site. FOS can go behind the scenes at major events such as the Super Bowl, the NFL Draft, and the international games, and can publish these works with the official NFL blessings.
“We are excited to work with the NFL to expand access to the country’s most popular leagues,” said Adam White, CEO of Front Office Sports, in a release announcing the partnership.
But at what cost?
The NFL is free and gives nothing. There is always a price, and is usually greater than the fee someone pays for related to financial juggernauts. There is expectations that come when you’re in bed with the NFL, and the main thing is that you’re not showing the league any bad.
Even before the NFL bought a 10% stake in ESPN, broadcasters closed projects the league doesn’t like or like.
“Playmakers” was a popular scripted series about life in professional soccer. However, it only lasted one season as some of the fewer stories than fictional teams and league stories (a drug-troubled star rookie, another player who he was trying to hide as gay) was ranked in the NFL.
ESPN and PBS Frontline collaborated for more than a year on League of Denial, a documentary about the handling of a growing crisis league of former players developing chronic traumatic encephalopathy and other brain injuries before ESPN suddenly abandoned the project.
Bob Costas was not only a Sunday Night Football host, but also one of the network’s biggest stars after NBC returned to the NFL rotation in 2005. He hosted the Olympics, the other marquee property of NBC, and led network coverage for almost every other big sporting event. He even had his own talk show, “later.”
However, when Costas’ criticism of the game’s physical victims grew and became more frequent, he found himself looking outside. After saying at a journalism symposium in November 2017, “This game destroys people’s brains,” Costas was pulled away from NBC’s Super Bowl LII coverage.
“Network, all of them dance to NFL songs. That’s a bit of a way. Everyone walks eggshells around the NFL,” Costas told ESPN’s Mark Fainaru-wada for a story released in early 2019.
Costas later said he regretted talking to ESPN. Not because what he said was not true, but because of the tension caused by his NBC colleagues.
Of course, the NFL denies exerting excessive influence. Or it will have any impact. That’s the beauty of being an 800-pound gorilla. You get what you want without saying a word.
This is the league that generated more than $23 billion in revenue last year. The game and the show that leads them are rated Bonanza, coated with Teflon. It has a fierce fan base in the US and is exploding international interest.
If you’re lucky enough to connect to the NFL, you’re not stupid enough to do anything that could put that gold mine in danger. Even if it means ignoring important stories or avoiding off uncomfortable questions.
“The only business arrangement where buyers can think about where sellers need to flatten their sellers on a continuous basis is the sports television business,” Costas told Fainal Wada in a 2019 story. “‘We’re raising Brinks armored trucks to Park Avenue, Mr Goodell, which includes billions of dollars to pay you for the rights and privileges to air your game.
The NFL cannot buy everyone’s silence. That doesn’t stop you from trying it.
Follow USA Today sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrammour.
