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As they met in the lobby of the Omni Viking Lakes Hotel in Minnesota in late August, Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, and Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, greeted each other warmly, sharing fist bumps as a small entourage that included their oldest sons surrounded them.
“Boy, you’re looking trim,” Mr. Jones, wearing a light blue jacket with a diamond star pin on his lapel, told Mr. Kraft, wearing his signature Nike dress sneakers. The two men, who have nine Super Bowl wins between them (six for Mr. Kraft, 83, and three for Mr. Jones, 82), were upbeat and refreshed after their summer vacations in the South of France and the Hamptons.
Soon they were joined in the lobby by other N.F.L. royalty: the Kansas City Chiefs owner, Clark Hunt; the Pittsburgh Steelers owner, Art Rooney II; and, most significant, Roger Goodell, the league commissioner. There were smiles all around — and for good reason.
Over the next three hours, Mr. Goodell, 65, would preside over yet another decision that would make these already extremely wealthy individuals even richer: The league’s owners voted 31 to 1 to allow teams to sell up to 10 percent of their multibillion-dollar clubs to private equity groups.
Afterward, as other owners slipped into their waiting limousines, Mr. Jones, the most ardent proponent of growing the league, said to a gaggle of waiting reporters: “This is good for anybody that’s in love with the N.F.L., any part of it — the game part, on the field, off the field. This is a good thing.”
The N.B.A., the N.H.L. and Major League Baseball tapped private equity money years ago. But the N.F.L. is the largest league with the best long-term prospects, which is why firms like Arctos Partners, Sixth Street Partners and others have been eager to bid for stakes in the Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins and other clubs. By year’s end, owners of N.F.L. teams, worth on average $6.5 billion, may get nine-figure checks to help pay for new stadiums, buy out partners or retire debt.
The private equity move is the latest financial milestone in Mr. Goodell’s 18-year stewardship of the N.F.L. The son of a politician, he has spent his entire career in the league, starting as an intern after college, then climbing the ladder by tackling an array of jobs, including overseeing its international expansion and strong-arming cities to subsidize stadiums. By the time Mr. Goodell was elected commissioner in 2006, succeeding Paul Tagliabue, he was well aware that Mr. Jones, Mr. Kraft and other owners who had paid nine and 10 figures for their teams wanted faster returns on their investments.
Mr. Goodell has been the man to make sure that happens, with a series of aggressive moves over the past two decades that have made the N.F.L. the wealthiest sports league in the world.
While its financial prowess has been lauded in sports business circles, some of its growth has come at the expense of the players who have to play expanded schedules with less recovery time and a greater risk of injury. Fans, too, are having to shell out more to attend games or watch their favorite sport on television, with streaming services like Amazon, Peacock and Netflix showing more N.F.L. games — including playoff contests — that used to be the sole province of network TV and basic cable.
“They’re doing what other leagues are doing, but from the highest mountaintop in the industry,” said Robert Boland, a former N.F.L. agent who teaches sports law at Seton Hall University. “The big leagues are all moving away from a live product consumed by everyday men and women, but because the N.F.L. was so available for so long, there’s some pain attached to this.”
An Audacious Target
In 2010, at the league’s annual meeting at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes, in Florida, Mr. Goodell and his chief financial officer, Anthony Noto, unveiled an audacious target: The N.F.L. would hit $25 billion in revenue by 2027. The league generated about $8 billion at the time, double the amount it had 17 years earlier. Now, Mr. Goodell wanted to more than triple its revenue in the next 17 years. Owners and executives in the room shared sideways glances.
The N.F.L. was the country’s most lucrative league, but it was facing headwinds from a deep recession and a labor deal that the owners felt had given the players too big a share of the revenue. The owners were optimistic by nature, but not that optimistic.
“You know, Roger always speaks confidently, and him saying it not all that far into his reign as commissioner, I have to admit, it was quite a statement,” said Steve Underwood, a former Tennessee Titans general counsel, who attended the meeting. “I didn’t see how he could achieve that, to be deadly blunt.”
With the league now in its 105th season, Mr. Goodell’s goal is no longer an ambitious dream; it’s becoming a reality. The league has grown by about $1 billion a year since 2010 and now generates more than $20 billion in annual revenue.
In 2021, the league signed media rights contracts — its largest source of revenue — worth more than $110 billion, about twice the amount of prior deals. CBS, Fox and NBC agreed to pay more than $2 billion annually to hold on to their slots to broadcast games. And ESPN is shelling out about $2.7 billion a year to continue airing “Monday Night Football,” and to be added into the rotation to broadcast the Super Bowl beginning in 2026.
In 2020, the owners persuaded the players to accept an additional 17th regular-season game, and in 2021, they added extra playoff games, changes that increased revenue even more. In April, at the N.F.L. draft in Detroit, Mr. Goodell floated the idea of an 18th regular-season game, a contentious proposal that would extend the season to Presidents’ Day weekend in late February. Revenue has also poured in from new stadiums in Las Vegas, Los Angeles and beyond.
“I thought the target was aggressive but, to be honest, achievable,” Mr. Kraft said, referring to the commissioner’s goal of achieving $25 billion in revenue by 2027. “I’m proud of Roger for putting it on the table to motivate everyone in the league office and the business management of teams that we all had to pull it together and try and make that happen.”
As the league has prospered, so has Mr. Goodell: About 90 percent of the commissioner’s compensation is tied to a basket of metrics and incentives. After securing lucrative labor and broadcast deals and steering the league through the Covid-19 pandemic without missing a game, he received $63,900,050 in each of the fiscal years running from April 2019 to March 2020 and April 2020 to March 2021, making him one of the highest-paid executives in the country. In October, Mr. Goodell signed an extension that will keep him atop the league through March 2027, when he will be 68. (Mr. Goodell declined to be interviewed for this article.)
An Unstoppable Juggernaut
One of Mr. Goodell’s other big jobs is to shield the owners from controversies. In 2014, he was widely criticized for his two-game suspension of the Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice after video showed him dragging his fiancée out of a hotel elevator. The criticism turned into a national uproar when a subsequent video showed Mr. Rice knocking her unconscious. (Mr. Goodell suspended Mr. Rice indefinitely after the release of the second video. An arbitrator nullified that decision, saying Mr. Rice could not be penalized twice for the same offense.)
Three years later, the commissioner was chastised — including by President Donald J. Trump — for his handling of protests by dozens of players who knelt during the playing of the national anthem to draw attention to police brutality and social injustice.
But Mr. Goodell has emerged from those and other controversies with the support of ownership primarily for one reason: He keeps making them money.
Last year, 93 of the top 100 programs on television were N.F.L. games. The number of N.F.L. fans has increased to about 210 million, up from 170 million about a decade ago, according to figures supplied by the league. But the N.F.L. has grown in part because Mr. Goodell and the owners take small, careful steps, not bold leaps. The new private equity investment rules fit that pattern.
The owners began discussing accepting private equity in 2019 but chose to watch how other leagues handled the process first. The N.F.L. wanted to preserve its governance structure, which relies heavily on owners to make most key decisions affecting the league. The owners were also wary of diluting the control of the multigenerational families that own the Chicago Bears, the New York Giants, the Steelers and other teams.
Most of those families have their wealth wrapped up in their teams and lack the cash to build splashy stadiums. As the value of teams has soared — the Washington Commanders fetched a record $6 billion in 2023, despite having a 32-49-1 record the previous five years — they have found it harder to attract bidders with pockets deep enough to buy minority stakes that can cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Private equity firms have access to billions of dollars and have been eager investors in the sports world. But they have a reputation for slashing costs at companies they acquire and flipping them for a quick profit, potential turmoil the N.F.L. owners want to avoid.
So last year, Mr. Goodell created a committee that included Mr. Hunt, Mr. Kraft, the Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, the Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, the Denver Broncos chief executive Greg Penner and the Commanders owner Josh Harris to design rules so teams could tap private equity money while keeping the firms at arms length.
At a meeting in August, the league’s owners approved investment by four private equity groups. Three of them — Arctos, Sixth Street and Ares Management — can invest in no more than six teams at a time. The fourth group, a consortium that includes Blackstone and the Carlyle Group, can invest in up to 12 teams.
“We tried to talk to people who we think are in the know, and I think we were patient on this,” Mr. Goodell said to reporters after the meeting. “We hope by taking what we think are the blue-chip firms that this will be a successful approach for everyone at the N.F.L., the investors and the firms. So we think we found the right model.”
An 18th Game
Soon after having back surgery, Mr. Goodell flew to Detroit in April to host the draft, where players have traditionally walked onstage after being selected by a team and bear-hugged the commissioner. (Players were told to avoid doing so this year, but at least one, JC Latham, ignored the directive.)
The draft is an example of how Mr. Goodell has maximized the N.F.L.’s popularity. In 2015, the league moved the three-day event out of New York City, its longtime home, to Chicago, Nashville, Las Vegas and elsewhere, drawing larger crowds each year, including a record 750,000 fans in Detroit.
During the draft, Mr. Goodell said in an interview on ESPN that he favored adding an extra regular-season game. The owners have long craved an 18th game because it would mean more ticket revenue and money from broadcasters. But the league needs the players to agree, and union reps quickly voiced their opposition, saying it could further endanger the players’ health.
“Yeah, 18 games sounds great when Roger is saying it on Pat McAfee’s,” said the Indianapolis Colts center Ryan Kelly, a member of the union’s executive committee, referring to the ESPN interview. “But until you’re the one going out there and putting a helmet on for 18 of those games, yeah, then come talk to me.”
Not every owner favors an expanded schedule, either.
“People seem to think that it’s a fait accompli, and maybe it will happen,” John Mara, a co-owner of the Giants, said. But, he added, “I’m not a big fan of it. The season is long enough as it is.”
But Mr. Mara is in the minority. Brian Rolapp, the league’s top media and business officer, said that like many large companies, the league suffered from the “tyranny of big numbers” and must work harder to find new revenue. An 18-game schedule is one way to do that.
“It’s a cliché, but I’ll say it: Complacency is an enemy,” Mr. Rolapp said.
Speaking of Mr. Goodell’s predecessor, he added: “Paul Tagliabue had a line I remember. He said, ‘If it ain’t broke, fix it anyway.’ I think there’s a healthy paranoia here about how do you keep it going? How do you keep it growing? How do you keep it fresh?”
Teams are also contributing, Mr. Rolapp said. The Falcons, for example, are attracting more high-end fans to Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta by adding field-level suites behind the team benches that sell out at every event. Living-room-type suites on the second deck were added and sponsored by AT&T. The team opened a two-level private club, where members pay $15,000 a season. The club is sold out.
“It’s the champagne kind of service crowd down there,” the Falcons president Greg Beadles said.
These amenities are one reason the average cost of attending a game has jumped 44 percent since 2015, according to Freebets.com. But watching games at home has become more expensive, too, as the N.F.L. airs more of them exclusively on streaming platforms, which require subscriptions that can cost hundreds of dollars a year.
Mr. Goodell has defended the strategy, saying that fewer younger fans have cable television packages, so putting games on streaming services is a way to reach them.
“We have to fish where the fish are,” Mr. Goodell said at the Super Bowl in February. “For us, it’s part of the future.”
Flag Football at the Olympics
The notion that the N.F.L. was greedy — or too greedy, depending on your view — was partly why Mr. Goodell flew to Los Angeles in June to testify in the antitrust trial brought by customers of the subscription service Sunday Ticket. The plaintiffs claimed that the league had colluded with CBS and Fox to inflate prices of the service, which shows all out-of-market games on Sundays. Mr. Goodell had never appeared as a witness in a federal trial, but the stakes were high because the case challenged a core of the league’s business model: exclusive agreements with broadcasters.
Mr. Goodell’s four-hour testimony, in which he said Sunday Ticket was a premium product and had been priced accordingly, didn’t win over the jurors. Before he flew to Sun Valley, Idaho, for Allen & Company’s conference for media and technology leaders in July, the jury returned a $4.7 billion verdict against the league.
In an appearance on “Squawk Box” on CNBC during the conference, Mr. Goodell vowed to appeal. That became moot on Aug. 1, when Judge Philip Gutierrez threw the case out of U.S. District Court because, he said, the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses had used flawed logic when determining damages.
That let the owners exhale, and Mr. Goodell could jet to the Paris Games without a crisis on his hands. N.F.L. commissioners don’t often attend the Olympics, but because of Mr. Goodell’s lobbying, flag football will be included for the first time in 2028 at the Los Angeles Games.
The league has been promoting flag football in part to persuade nervous parents to let their sons and daughters pick up the game. When Mr. Goodell took over as commissioner, stories about players suffering from long-term brain damage were front-page news. He has pushed for better equipment and rule changes to reduce dangerous plays like hits to the head, though the repetitive hits that have been linked to neurological and cognitive problems later in life are nearly impossible to remove from the game.
Some critics call flag football a gateway to tackle football. Even Mr. Goodell acknowledges that flag football is not without its risks. But every N.F.L. team now sponsors youth flag leagues. In July, the N.F.L. hosted a championship weekend in Canton, Ohio, where more than 2,000 athletes from around the world competed, and ESPN showed some of the games.
Peter O’Reilly, who runs events for the league, said sponsors like Toyota and Visa had attached their names to the tournament during a lull in the N.F.L. calendar. He said the event could move around the country, a formula that had worked well for the draft.
“Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if other cities or teams were interested in hosting at some of their team complexes,” Mr. O’Reilly said.
Expanding the Global Footprint
To the N.F.L., flag football is another way to keep fans involved in the league. That has been its approach to sports betting as well. The league doesn’t make money on the bets themselves, but it sells tens of millions of dollars in sponsorships to gambling companies like Draft Kings.
It also makes money selling its real-time statistical feeds, which will be integrated into streams that fans can personalize, something the league hopes will further increase viewership.
“I know people are focused on betting and gambling, but to me, it’s just about engagement,” said Steve Bornstein, who previously ran the league’s media group and is now the president of North America for the sports technology company Genius Sports. “You have all this data. The trick is how do you use it.”
Another frontier is overseas. With the U.S. market near saturation, the league has been expanding its footprint across the globe. In Week 1 of the current season, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Green Bay Packers played in São Paulo, Brazil, the first N.F.L. game in South America and the 44th played on international soil since 2007. Global expansion is such a priority that Mr. Goodell flew to Brazil instead of to Kansas City, Mo., where the Super Bowl champion Chiefs hosted the season-opening game. (The Brazilian contest was streamed on Peacock.)
Not everyone is on board with the league’s global push. Before heading out on a nine-hour flight to São Paulo, the Eagles cornerback Darius Slay Jr. questioned why the N.F.L. would play in a market where players had been told not to leave their hotels for their own safety.
“I’m like, N.F.L., why would you all want to send us somewhere where the crime rate is this high?” Mr. Slay said. “We’re out of the country, and so the first thing we’re thinking is something terrible could possibly happen.”
But Mr. Goodell remains committed to the ambitious plan he outlined 14 years ago. He recently said the N.F.L. could play as many as 16 games a year overseas, up from five now, which could allow the league to create a new media-rights package — and yet another huge payday for the N.F.L. owners and their expansionist commissioner.
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