azdad1978
Championship!!!!
Kent Somers
The Arizona Republic
Sept. 4, 2005 12:00 AM
It's the opening week of the NFL season and the beginning of the High Holy Days for Americans. By nearly every measure, professional football is the most popular sport in the land. Everything else might as well be lawn darts.
We play in fantasy leagues, buy satellite television packages, arrange to have results sent to our cellphones and schedule our Sundays and Monday nights (OK, the occasional Thursday and Saturday, too) around games.
The 12 most-watched programs ever are Super Bowls. In a Harris Poll taken a year ago, 30 percent of respondents named pro football their favorite sport, with baseball finishing second at 15 percent. Just 20 years ago, the two were tied.
The NFL's increased popularity has allowed the league to sign billions of dollars worth of advertising, TV and sponsorship contracts, just in the last year. The question now is not when but if the growth will end.
"The NFL has a mass appeal that's just unprecedented," said Whitney Wagoner, an industry analyst and instructor at the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon.
She should know. She spent seven years working for the NFL in marketing and selling sponsorships.
"No one gets the masses of human beings to pay attention like they do," she said. "They seemingly just have to wake up in the morning, put a game on the field, and it works."
Why we love NFL
The NFL is popular for several reasons. Partly, it's the game. It's fast, physical and violent.
Partly, it's because the league has been intelligently managed for decades.
Each team has only 16 regular-season games, which makes each one an event. If baseball is an old friend who drops in every summer evening, football is the crazy, funny uncle who shows up only once a week.
"The scarcity of football is an advantage that's not commented on enough," said Michael MacCambridge, author of the book America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation. "The country as a whole is becoming an event-driven culture, and pro football games are still events in the way that baseball can't be."
The violence of the game is attractive, too, as is its relationship with gambling, legal and otherwise.
"People always talk about gambling like it's some dirty secret," MacCambridge said. "I think David got 7 1/2 points against Goliath. People have been gambling for quite a while."
The people who have operated the NFL have done a nice job of not messing it up, a rarity in sports. Former Commissioner Pete Rozelle saw the potential in TV long before his counterparts in other sports. Small-market teams have a chance to compete because the league's owners have shared a large percentage of revenues for years, and the league has a salary cap that works.
Major League Baseball wrestled with those issues for years.
"What doesn't exist in baseball, and hasn't in the last 10 years, is the sense that everybody has a chance and an opportunity," MacCambridge said. "That's true in spades in professional football."
Why sponsors love NFL
It's been said that sports, and the NFL especially, puts the "mass" in mass marketing. Television audiences have been fragmented by the enormous number of channels now offered, creating niche markets that make it difficult for sponsors to reach large numbers of people. NFL games, however, attract a wide demographic.
With the exception of ESPN and DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket, games are played on free TV. That has helped create a diverse audience that sponsors love.
"The NFL cuts across all demographics for an advertiser," said Reed Bergman, CEO of Playbook Inc., a sports marketing firm. "More and more companies are realizing they can reach their core consumers by being involved with the NFL."
The NFL, however, hasn't been on the cutting edge of technology. They were slow to join the fantasy football league craze, because the league didn't want to be viewed as endorsing gambling. Other sports, most notably the NBA, were using wireless technology to connect with fans long before the NFL started.
"That's part of their strategy," said Wagoner, the industry analyst from Oregon. "They want other people to try (something new), and then they come in with their powerful brand at the end."
No other American sport has as strong an attachment with so many fans. That helps the league form what Wagoner calls a "sticky" relationship with its audience.
"A 19-year-old logs on to check out his fantasy team and he's on NFL.com for 2 1/2 hours," Wagoner said.
Passionate love
The NFL attracts and keeps consumers without sacrificing its mass appeal or offending another segment of fans, guys such as Mike Cistolo, a 31-year-old pharmaceutical salesman in Chandler.
To him, the NFL season is almost a religious time of year, and this week is like the week before Christmas.
Cistolo is a Steelers fan, which is like saying Terrell Owens is a little controversial. Fan doesn't begin to describe him.
Cistolo wears a Steelers hard hat during games.
He dresses his 2-year-old son, Anthony, in a Steelers jersey, and when the Steelers lose, it's best to give Cistolo a wide berth.
He has such an emotional investment in each Sunday's game that he doesn't want to be distracted by fantasy leagues.
"It dictates my week for the most part," he said of the outcome of Steelers games.
Last season was great because Pittsburgh lost just once in the regular season. "I had only one week to deal with being in a (bad) mood," Cistolo said.
His wife, Lisa, often leaves the house when the Steelers are playing.
"She considers herself a jinx almost," he said.
"She'll go shopping or usually do her own thing.
"She calls to see how the Steelers are doing, and that determines whether she comes home right away or lets me cool off."
Seeking more love
There are millions of Cistolos across the country, passionate fans with a ravenous desire for the game. They buy team apparel, pay for the NFL Sunday Ticket, which offers satellite access to every game, and watch the NFL Network.
There are millions of casual fans, too, people who watch a game here and there and never miss a Super Bowl.
Within that spectrum, the NFL sees room for growth. It wants to engage the disinterested fans (both of them?), transform the casual fans into avid ones and give the devoted ones even more ways to enjoy the game.
That strategy is one reason the league is beginning to target the Hispanic market, to which it admittedly has given short shrift. The Cardinals' game against San Francisco in Mexico City on Oct. 2, the first regular-season game scheduled to be played in another country, is central to that strategy.
"Traditionally, I don't think we've put a focus on it," said Roger Goodell, the NFL's executive vice president and chief operating officer. "It gives us an opportunity to go to a market where there is a great deal of interest in American football. And we think it will have a special interest and appeal to Hispanic fans in the United States."
The NFL's future is not all balloons and ribbons, however.
The current collective bargaining agreement, which has produced labor peace, expires after the 2007 season.
Players want a bigger share of revenue. There's a considerable gap in earnings between large- and small-market teams, which could lead to a competitive imbalance.
Teams with more money could pay coaches more, hire bigger staffs and pay larger signing bonuses.
Industry experts, however, would be surprised if those issues aren't resolved by the end of this season.
"The NFL has been very good about solving problems before they got out of hand," MacCambridge said.
"Pro football has certainly suffered fewer self-inflicted wounds than other sports. There is a sense that the owners understand what they have going for them."
NFL timeline
1920 Representatives from four professional teams meet in an automobile showroom in Canton, Ohio, and form the American Professional Football Conference. Two years later, the name is changed to the National Football League.
1936 The draft is implemented, and the Eagles make Heisman Trophy winner Jay Berwanger, a halfback from the University of Chicago, the first player ever drafted.
1946 The league becomes national when the Rams move from Cleveland to Los Angeles.
1958 Baltimore defeats the Giants in the first sudden-death overtime championship game. Fans get a sampling of just how exciting pro football can be.
1959 Lamar Hunt announces his intentions to form the American Football League.
1960 Pete Rozelle is elected NFL commissioner.
1964 The AFL signs a five-year, $36 million television contract with ABC to broadcast the 1965 season. CBS submits a winning $14.1 million-a-year bid for NFL regular-season rights in 1964 and 1965.
1966 The two leagues spend $7 million to sign their draft choices. Secret meetings are held, and a merger is announced June 8.
1967 On Jan. 15, the first Super Bowl is held. The Packers beat Kansas City 35-10 in front of 61,946 fans.
1969 The Jets become the first AFL team to win a Super Bowl, upsetting the Colts 16-7.
1970 Monday Night Football starts on ABC, and the NFL becomes the first league to have games regularly broadcast in prime time.
1978 102 million people watch the broadcast of Super Bowl XII, the most to watch any show in TV history.
1982 A players strike forces the season to be reduced from 16 games to nine. The two sides reach agreement in November on a new collective bargaining agreement to run through 1986.
1985 Approximately 116 million people watch Super Bowl XIX.
1986 A jury awards the USFL $1 in its antitrust suit against the NFL. The USFL folds.
1987 The NFL sells its TV rights to three networks for three years. ESPN also signs on to broadcast games for three seasons. The total worth of the deals is $1.4 billion. The players go on strike but return for the seventh week of the season. The union formally decertifies and pursues litigation against the league. It eventually wins, and a settlement is reached.
1993 The NFL and the union agree on a new seven-year labor agreement. It's extended, and the league enjoys labor peace through today.
2005 CBS and FOX extend broadcast deals for six years. ESPN and NBC reach similar agreements. Reportedly, the league will earn $4.8 billion a year from its television deals.
http://www.azcentral.com/sports/cardinals/articles/0904nflmain0904.html
The Arizona Republic
Sept. 4, 2005 12:00 AM
It's the opening week of the NFL season and the beginning of the High Holy Days for Americans. By nearly every measure, professional football is the most popular sport in the land. Everything else might as well be lawn darts.
We play in fantasy leagues, buy satellite television packages, arrange to have results sent to our cellphones and schedule our Sundays and Monday nights (OK, the occasional Thursday and Saturday, too) around games.
The 12 most-watched programs ever are Super Bowls. In a Harris Poll taken a year ago, 30 percent of respondents named pro football their favorite sport, with baseball finishing second at 15 percent. Just 20 years ago, the two were tied.
The NFL's increased popularity has allowed the league to sign billions of dollars worth of advertising, TV and sponsorship contracts, just in the last year. The question now is not when but if the growth will end.
"The NFL has a mass appeal that's just unprecedented," said Whitney Wagoner, an industry analyst and instructor at the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon.
She should know. She spent seven years working for the NFL in marketing and selling sponsorships.
"No one gets the masses of human beings to pay attention like they do," she said. "They seemingly just have to wake up in the morning, put a game on the field, and it works."
Why we love NFL
The NFL is popular for several reasons. Partly, it's the game. It's fast, physical and violent.
Partly, it's because the league has been intelligently managed for decades.
Each team has only 16 regular-season games, which makes each one an event. If baseball is an old friend who drops in every summer evening, football is the crazy, funny uncle who shows up only once a week.
"The scarcity of football is an advantage that's not commented on enough," said Michael MacCambridge, author of the book America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation. "The country as a whole is becoming an event-driven culture, and pro football games are still events in the way that baseball can't be."
The violence of the game is attractive, too, as is its relationship with gambling, legal and otherwise.
"People always talk about gambling like it's some dirty secret," MacCambridge said. "I think David got 7 1/2 points against Goliath. People have been gambling for quite a while."
The people who have operated the NFL have done a nice job of not messing it up, a rarity in sports. Former Commissioner Pete Rozelle saw the potential in TV long before his counterparts in other sports. Small-market teams have a chance to compete because the league's owners have shared a large percentage of revenues for years, and the league has a salary cap that works.
Major League Baseball wrestled with those issues for years.
"What doesn't exist in baseball, and hasn't in the last 10 years, is the sense that everybody has a chance and an opportunity," MacCambridge said. "That's true in spades in professional football."
Why sponsors love NFL
It's been said that sports, and the NFL especially, puts the "mass" in mass marketing. Television audiences have been fragmented by the enormous number of channels now offered, creating niche markets that make it difficult for sponsors to reach large numbers of people. NFL games, however, attract a wide demographic.
With the exception of ESPN and DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket, games are played on free TV. That has helped create a diverse audience that sponsors love.
"The NFL cuts across all demographics for an advertiser," said Reed Bergman, CEO of Playbook Inc., a sports marketing firm. "More and more companies are realizing they can reach their core consumers by being involved with the NFL."
The NFL, however, hasn't been on the cutting edge of technology. They were slow to join the fantasy football league craze, because the league didn't want to be viewed as endorsing gambling. Other sports, most notably the NBA, were using wireless technology to connect with fans long before the NFL started.
"That's part of their strategy," said Wagoner, the industry analyst from Oregon. "They want other people to try (something new), and then they come in with their powerful brand at the end."
No other American sport has as strong an attachment with so many fans. That helps the league form what Wagoner calls a "sticky" relationship with its audience.
"A 19-year-old logs on to check out his fantasy team and he's on NFL.com for 2 1/2 hours," Wagoner said.
Passionate love
The NFL attracts and keeps consumers without sacrificing its mass appeal or offending another segment of fans, guys such as Mike Cistolo, a 31-year-old pharmaceutical salesman in Chandler.
To him, the NFL season is almost a religious time of year, and this week is like the week before Christmas.
Cistolo is a Steelers fan, which is like saying Terrell Owens is a little controversial. Fan doesn't begin to describe him.
Cistolo wears a Steelers hard hat during games.
He dresses his 2-year-old son, Anthony, in a Steelers jersey, and when the Steelers lose, it's best to give Cistolo a wide berth.
He has such an emotional investment in each Sunday's game that he doesn't want to be distracted by fantasy leagues.
"It dictates my week for the most part," he said of the outcome of Steelers games.
Last season was great because Pittsburgh lost just once in the regular season. "I had only one week to deal with being in a (bad) mood," Cistolo said.
His wife, Lisa, often leaves the house when the Steelers are playing.
"She considers herself a jinx almost," he said.
"She'll go shopping or usually do her own thing.
"She calls to see how the Steelers are doing, and that determines whether she comes home right away or lets me cool off."
Seeking more love
There are millions of Cistolos across the country, passionate fans with a ravenous desire for the game. They buy team apparel, pay for the NFL Sunday Ticket, which offers satellite access to every game, and watch the NFL Network.
There are millions of casual fans, too, people who watch a game here and there and never miss a Super Bowl.
Within that spectrum, the NFL sees room for growth. It wants to engage the disinterested fans (both of them?), transform the casual fans into avid ones and give the devoted ones even more ways to enjoy the game.
That strategy is one reason the league is beginning to target the Hispanic market, to which it admittedly has given short shrift. The Cardinals' game against San Francisco in Mexico City on Oct. 2, the first regular-season game scheduled to be played in another country, is central to that strategy.
"Traditionally, I don't think we've put a focus on it," said Roger Goodell, the NFL's executive vice president and chief operating officer. "It gives us an opportunity to go to a market where there is a great deal of interest in American football. And we think it will have a special interest and appeal to Hispanic fans in the United States."
The NFL's future is not all balloons and ribbons, however.
The current collective bargaining agreement, which has produced labor peace, expires after the 2007 season.
Players want a bigger share of revenue. There's a considerable gap in earnings between large- and small-market teams, which could lead to a competitive imbalance.
Teams with more money could pay coaches more, hire bigger staffs and pay larger signing bonuses.
Industry experts, however, would be surprised if those issues aren't resolved by the end of this season.
"The NFL has been very good about solving problems before they got out of hand," MacCambridge said.
"Pro football has certainly suffered fewer self-inflicted wounds than other sports. There is a sense that the owners understand what they have going for them."
NFL timeline
1920 Representatives from four professional teams meet in an automobile showroom in Canton, Ohio, and form the American Professional Football Conference. Two years later, the name is changed to the National Football League.
1936 The draft is implemented, and the Eagles make Heisman Trophy winner Jay Berwanger, a halfback from the University of Chicago, the first player ever drafted.
1946 The league becomes national when the Rams move from Cleveland to Los Angeles.
1958 Baltimore defeats the Giants in the first sudden-death overtime championship game. Fans get a sampling of just how exciting pro football can be.
1959 Lamar Hunt announces his intentions to form the American Football League.
1960 Pete Rozelle is elected NFL commissioner.
1964 The AFL signs a five-year, $36 million television contract with ABC to broadcast the 1965 season. CBS submits a winning $14.1 million-a-year bid for NFL regular-season rights in 1964 and 1965.
1966 The two leagues spend $7 million to sign their draft choices. Secret meetings are held, and a merger is announced June 8.
1967 On Jan. 15, the first Super Bowl is held. The Packers beat Kansas City 35-10 in front of 61,946 fans.
1969 The Jets become the first AFL team to win a Super Bowl, upsetting the Colts 16-7.
1970 Monday Night Football starts on ABC, and the NFL becomes the first league to have games regularly broadcast in prime time.
1978 102 million people watch the broadcast of Super Bowl XII, the most to watch any show in TV history.
1982 A players strike forces the season to be reduced from 16 games to nine. The two sides reach agreement in November on a new collective bargaining agreement to run through 1986.
1985 Approximately 116 million people watch Super Bowl XIX.
1986 A jury awards the USFL $1 in its antitrust suit against the NFL. The USFL folds.
1987 The NFL sells its TV rights to three networks for three years. ESPN also signs on to broadcast games for three seasons. The total worth of the deals is $1.4 billion. The players go on strike but return for the seventh week of the season. The union formally decertifies and pursues litigation against the league. It eventually wins, and a settlement is reached.
1993 The NFL and the union agree on a new seven-year labor agreement. It's extended, and the league enjoys labor peace through today.
2005 CBS and FOX extend broadcast deals for six years. ESPN and NBC reach similar agreements. Reportedly, the league will earn $4.8 billion a year from its television deals.
http://www.azcentral.com/sports/cardinals/articles/0904nflmain0904.html
Last edited:
