Road to The Big Game

Forget the commercials, the halftime show, or any of the collateral that comes along with producing an event that has commanded 60% of the country’s viewers for the past 40 years. What is it really about the Super Bowl and the NFL that has sustained such high popularity despite incredible cultural, political, media, and consumer change?  The answer lies at the heart of the NFL’s creation story and business model.  Just as the framers of the U.S. constitution laid a road map to become a World super power, the NFL’s forefathers made astute and often unpopular decisions that paved the way for the NFL to become what it is today.  Ironically, what makes the Super Bowl truly “America’s Game,” is the NFL’s historical adherence to an economic principle that would have made you precisely “un-American” in the 50’s and 60’s.

The true heroes of the NFL success story didn’t wear helmets and shoulder pads. Commissioner’s Burt Bell in and his successor Pete Rozelle in the early 60’s, along with team owners, had the courage and faith to stick with a Business Model of revenue sharing and competitive balance in an era when the whiff of Socialism was enough to get you on a list in Northeast Virgina.  This required incredible sacrifice and team work, characteristics that embody the sport itself.  Organizations in big markets, such as Wellington Mara’s New York Giants, agreed to distribute the revenues equally among all of the teams, forgoing millions of dollars for the long term prosperity of the NFL. The NFL was able to survive in smaller markets throughout the country such as Green Bay, and maintain a strong presence in smaller both metropolitan and rural areas, without which you could never have the “reach” necessary to deliver a 40 plus Nielsen rating. When President John F Kennedy signed the Sports Broadcasting Act in 1961, providing the NFL an exemption from US anti-trust laws and stamping a series of decidedly un-capitalistic NFL agreements that set the stage for the Super Bowl and NFL to become the marketing bonanza that it is today.  Most importantly, with every team receiving equal revenues, it leveled the competitive playing field, so that every team had the resources to compete, and an equal chance to appear in the Super Bowl, and for one year, to be America’s team.

by Tom Ziangas, Nielsen Sports