Now that the NFL, the richest sports league in the world, sits unchallenged atop American sports, that lofty perch raises its own questions: How can you sustain growth and popularity without falling prey to complacency—or greed? How do you further grow a successful league while fending off platform decay and lawsuits? What threats are out there, and what are the league’s tactics to defang them? What are some unchartered territories for the league? In its annual NFL preview, Sportico analyzes how the NFL handles life as a monopoly. Click here to read the series.
The National Football League has been a Big Honking Deal for as long as anyone reading this has been alive, but its hegemonic stranglehold over the American psyche is very much a 21st century phenomenon. It was not until the 2011-12 broadcast season that Sunday Night Football earned bragging rights as the most-watched primetime TV program.
In the first five years of its run, SNF played second fiddle to Fox’s American Idol. Today, nothing on the nightly TV schedule can lay a glove on the NFL; in fact, it’s fair to say that NBC’s weekly football deliveries now make every non-sports offering on the dial look like a public-access puppet show by comparison.
