NFL Kickoff: the science gets more damning, but the money keeps growing

The Convergence of Sports and Business

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0:45Something like one in four NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had CTE. Now, is the game safer? You know, we've seen Tua Tungavailoa from the Dolphins laid out, prone on the field. The valuations and the business of the NFL keeps growing and growing and growing. I do wonder about the long tail. That's sports journalist Michelle Steele. The NFL is the world's biggest, most successful sports business, and today Michelle and I dig into what to expect in the upcoming 2026-2027 season, drawing on her experience at ESPN, Bloomberg, and now the Big Ten Network.

1:30We talk about quarterback salaries and what she contends is the most important position in sports, the next iteration of the Taylor Swift effect on the NFL, and the confusing array of TV watching options for fans, plus team valuation, sports betting, whether the Bears are really moving out of Chicago, and of course, the resurgent question of player safety. Every season is a fresh beginning, so let's kick things off. I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

2:03I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Michelle Steele. Michelle, thanks for joining us. Hey, Bob. Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to get into today's conversation. Yeah, you've covered the business of sports at Forbes, at Bloomberg, ESPN. Now you're at the Big Ten Network, and you've got a sub-stack steel cut. Do you look at the sports business as being, like, different than covering, quote, pure sports stories, or has all sports coverage become about business to some extent?

2:34Sports business reporting and sports reporting, Bob, have really converged. When I started out at Bloomberg, I was covering the markets. I was covering stocks. I was at the New York Stock Exchange. And then something called Tiger Woods happened, and they wanted someone who could speak relatively conversationally about sports. I'm certainly not going to name names, but there was an anchor at Bloomberg TV after I did a story once on the Jets, your New York Jets. My New York Jets, yes. He told me at the end of the segment, he said, you know, you really should tell the audience that the Jets are a football team.

3:09And I said, if I mention that the Jets are a football team, they will think I'm from Mars. So we're on the cusp of a new NFL season. So are you ready to dive in?

Team Valuations and Streaming Complexity

3:20Let's rip. All right. So the first question is about the NFL's value. The NFL has been called the world's best sports business, bringing in more than $20 billion in revenue each season. But the NBA's LA Lakers were just sold for $10 billion, edging out the Seattle Seahawks' $9.6, I guess, billion price tag. So is the NBA closing the gap between the two leagues, or is the NFL still top of the heap?

3:51I do think that that gap is certainly narrowing between the two. But I think that the Lakers occupy a very special place and, of course, a huge market. The Lakers don't even own their stadium, and they were able to get $12.5 billion from Bob Iger and Josh Kushner. The fact that that deal came together in 72 hours, it didn't even hit the open market. I think if it had hit an auction, I think it would have necessarily gone for even more than $12.5 billion.

4:22You saw the Seahawks get sold to Vinod Khosla. I think in both situations, there's only a few of these teams in the NBA and the NFL available at any one time. So, of course, scarcity is one big thing. And the other thing, I was at a conference last year where a dealmaker told me, you know, 30 years ago, maybe even 20 years ago, sports, you could not argue that sports was the center of the entertainment universe. Now it's undisputed. It is. I looked it up, and in 2018, 61 of the top 100 shows on broadcast television were sports.

5:03Do you know what it was five years later in 2023? It's practically everything. Practically everything. Yeah. It went up to over 90, 91, 90%. Sports is everything in entertainment, and the NFL is the 800-pound gorilla there. There are something like, I don't know, eight or nine different platforms that are hosting or streaming NFL games this season. I mean, I realize that's nine sources of revenue for the league, but it's also asking a lot of fans to keep track of and pay for.

5:34Like, is this good business, or is it short-sighted by the league? When you have private equity entering the NFL a couple of years ago, I think private equity funds can buy up to 10% of these teams. And certainly you've seen a financialization, say, of this asset class. For a long time, people bought these teams almost like they were collecting fine art. You know, it was a trophy. It was a prestige thing. And now you are attracting very, very high net worth investors and certainly family offices who are looking at the broader markets and seeing the volatility and looking at sports and seeing,

6:15okay, this is someplace where I can put my money that's a better bet, right, than, say, buying corporate debt right now. So I think the danger in treating these assets like pure assets is that, and this is something that a sports executive, a league executive told me a long time ago, the best franchises, Bob, are really run as public and private trusts. You can't mistreat your customers forever and think they're always going to be, at least that's my theory, that they're always going to be your fan.

6:52And making me go to a bunch of different streaming sites and spend that money, it's not making it easy for me to be a fan. No, I mean, for the 2020— Certainly not to watch the full games. I guess I can watch clips, you know, on social all day long, right? Well, it's great if you're a casual fan, but if you're, you know, it's the 80-20 Pareto principle that 80% of your returns are going to be driven by something like 20% of your customers, your returners, your hardcore, the faithful, the diehards.

7:23Yeah. That's not something that they want to hear. And for the NFL season this year, you have to get, you know, CBS and NBC and Fox and ABC and ESPN and YouTube TV. I mean, it's dizzying. Although, as a Jets fan, maybe there are maybe one or two games that you'd skip anyway. You're hurting me, but it's true. Well, all right.

The Chicago Bears Stadium Saga

7:44So that leads me to—because you're a Chicago native. You covered Chicago sports for ESPN. So that leads me to the future of the Chicago Bears. So Indiana's put something like a billion dollars in state incentives on the table to entice the Bears to move out of town. Is the idea of a Chicago without the Bears discomforting, or is this just the way of NFL business? When the Jets and Giants left New York, it was never quite the same. And I think Chicago and that iconic shot of the Bears on the lakefront on a cold day in December, I think that the league, and I think certainly Chicago fans, would miss having that.

8:24Now, we should also acknowledge 99.9% of fans are not going to be in a freezing cold stadium in December. They're going to be on a warm couch, and they don't really care where the team plays. But to the extent that we live in an attention economy and this story about the will they or won't they, right, the Bears announcing a few years ago that they were focused on the suburbs of Chicago, and then a couple years later saying that they're going to be focused on staying in Chicago, and then now this year saying, you know, we're—no, now all of our efforts and all of our focus is in Indiana.

8:58It strikes many here in Chicago as a leverage play. I mean, this is all about a new stadium, right? Like, a new stadium which can generate more money for the team over time, and getting taxpayer money to subsidize that, which I guess with teams worth billions of dollars and owned by billionaires, it sort of grates on people. Of course it grates. Yeah. I mean, you're really talking about a handful, right, maybe eight or nine home games in a season.

9:32The Bears are hoping to do a mixed-use development, which is what the Atlanta Braves did, with some success, by the way. The difference is there's obviously way more baseball games. You're going to have way more foot traffic. And there's a lot of questions about whether or not the idea of, like, a mall, like Patriot Place attached to Gillette, whether that's even going to be a viable idea in a place like Northwest Indiana, where people just don't have the kind of discretionary income that you see in the suburbs of Chicago. I mean, part of it also is that the Bears are navigating, of course, a complicated political picture here in Illinois, but they're also asking for a lot.

10:06They're asking for $900 million in infrastructure. Beyond that, they also want a 40-year property tax freeze. I'd also like one. And they also want exemptions on the materials that they buy for the stadium from sales tax. That's a big ask. So I just don't see—it feels like such an intractable situation. My own personal prognostication here, Bob, is that they'll be in Soldier Field for, I think, years to come.

International Games and Quarterback Salaries

10:34So this season includes a record nine games played outside the U.S. How do these games build value for the league? Like, are they really creating new fans? Is it more about creating travel experience for existing fans, for those 20 percent, you know, that you were talking about? It is a little combination of both. I mean, the games do tend to sell out. And anecdotally, when I've covered NFL games, I do meet international fans who come here, all the way here from England or Japan or wherever to watch the games.

11:11But at the end of the day, these international games are a little bit tied into the inventory conversation as well, increasing inventory to 18 games. That's all tied to media, getting more money for the media rights. If they can sell these media rights not just as a domestic play but as a global play, you can certainly juice some of these deals. I mean, the goal is to have every team play at least one game internationally per season.

11:47That's a big ask to ask teams to give up on that home revenue. But that's how much the NFL believes in this being a key part of their media strategy. And the idea of an NFL team based abroad, which, you know, Goodell claims is on the horizon. Do you feel like that's practical, realistic? I don't even like getting on the train in the morning to go downtown, much less flying from London, say, to Jacksonville.

12:17Well, there's a lot of speculation that of all the teams, it would be Jacksonville who would go to London. I don't know how that would be practical. And you'd, of course, have to get this as well through the NFLPA, the Players Association. And players are pretty opposed not just to the 18-game schedule but playing more of these games abroad. I will say that money tends to cure a lot of things. And if they can offer players, say, a bigger percentage than they're getting right now from the league when their collective bargaining agreement comes up,

12:52maybe that's a conversation they can have. All right. Speaking of money, the next question, quarterback salaries. They keep shooting up. The gap with other positions keep widening. Is that a potential structural problem for the league? You know, one position consuming so much salary cap space? Could it distort team dynamics and priorities? Well, it's a quarterback league, right? You're always going to have more of that salary being allocated for the most important person on the roster.

13:25The quarterback, Bob, I think is the hardest position in sports because not only do you have to be incredibly, incredibly athletic and kind of a physical freak, but you also have to be relatively cerebral, too. And that's a really, really rare combo. So, I mean, there's, what, 7 billion people on the planet and you can't get 32 starting quarterbacks in the NFL? It is pretty wild out of 6 billion people.

13:57Like, and many of them happen to be Mannings. You know, we talked about, like, the scarcity of teams. This is a scarcity of a certain position. I think players inside a locker room understand that. And more guys, you know, we've seen the salary cap go up quite substantially in the last few years. I think it's something like over $300 million per team, which is the first time that they've reached that threshold. And more guys and more groups are getting paid. You know, for a while there, there was a little bit of an ebb and flow with running backs,

14:28and the running backs were grousing about it. And now we are seeing some running backs get paid. Offensive line has never been paid the way that they're being paid right now because people, if it's a quarterback-driven league, there's got to be guys who protect that person, so they're going to get paid, too. I personally have not heard a ton of hand-wringing inside locker rooms over which positions are paid because the players understand themselves. As the NFL spotlight grows, the stars get even bigger.

15:01Fascinating how, with team valuations at record levels, the pressure on the league to do more, more, more just keeps rising. So what impact will Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey have on the NFL in 2026? And have we been tricked into believing player safety has improved? We'll talk about that and more after the break. Stay with us.

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17:21Before the break, sports business journalist Michelle Steele talked about how quarterback salaries, media rights deals, and international games will impact the new NFL season. Now, she addresses how the Taylor Swift-Travis-Kelsey effect is spreading through the league, and the implications of a chilling new report about CTE and brain risks for players. Plus, what would she put her money on in a prediction market for the upcoming season? Let's jump back in.

The Taylor Swift Effect on Viewership

17:51So, Taylor Swift's romance with Travis Kelsey brought new audiences to football. It sort of changed the conversation about celebrity and the NFL. There's buzz online about the NFL's so-called WAG strategy, you know, wives and girlfriends, the idea that more visible cameos of other players' partners are going to be coming. How much of that is real, what's being manufactured or managed, like, by players and agents, by the NFL front office itself?

18:23This was a story that front office sports broke a few weeks ago where they talked about sort of these players and players' girlfriends getting together after practice, which is a very common occurrence in the NFL during training camp. You'll see family and friends come out and meet the players right after practice. It almost feels like a family reunion. And there were cameras, which there always are at training camp. But my understanding is that the league sort of amplified the photos of players with the girlfriends specifically.

18:53That was a very specific, strategic decision on their part to try to appeal to women. And for good reason. I mean, we talk about the NFL as this mature asset. It's also a mature media property. It is the most popular sport by far. But there are still places where you can grow audience. Women are very much seen as that delta, as the new growth audience for the NFL.

19:24Almost half of the fan base in the NFL is female. But since 2024, we've seen female viewership, Bob, actually grow by about 9%. That's not a small number. And it's a strategy that the CMO of the NFL has called helmets off. This is a strategy to get to know. Women tend to react more positively to sort of human interests. They want to know the stories. And by the way, this is me painting with a broad brush.

19:54Not everybody, of course. But there is a little bit of a premium there put on someone's backstory, on their family background. And certainly, in this case, you know, the front office sports story that I mentioned, on the wives and the girlfriends, it is a little bit of a Taylor Swift effect, Bob. Even though the female audience was growing even before Taylor and Travis, those two people got together. And they sort of took this trend that already existed and just accelerated it by leaps and bounds.

20:28And I'm looking forward to the wedding video coming out. I imagine it'll come out sometime during the NFL season. That's just a hunch on my part, Bob. All right.

Player Safety and the CTE Crisis

20:38So the last main question I have for you revolves around something more challenging for the NFL, NFL player safety. I mean, a few years back, for me, as new concussion information was coming out, I started to get turned off by the brutality of the sport. You know, I felt like I was complicit in something that was cruel and exploitative. And then I got enticed back in. And now there's a new CTE report that's pretty scary.

21:10Have fans been tricked by concussion protocols and blue tents and, you know, new kickoff and tackling rules? Like, is football actually any safer for players? Do we know? The study that you're referring to, which is a new CTE report, where something like one in four NFL players, right, who died between 2016 and 2021 had CTE. And there were a couple of quotes in the article from former players who said they thought it was even more because not as many people were reporting.

21:51These are, of course, CTE diagnoses that were made posthumously. It's not the concussion, though, not those huge hits that lay guys out that are the primary factor behind CTE. It's sort of cumulative hits over time. And that's difficult because that is how the game is played. Now, is the game safer? That's hard for me to state conclusively.

22:21But there is certainly more of an emphasis around the NFL. The NFL introduced a regular independent neurologist who is going to be monitoring somebody who is not affiliated with the team who could help make the call on whether a player should stay in or out of the game. And I've been told by players that the controls are a lot more stringent than they used to be. But, of course, you know, we've saw Tua Tungavailoa from the Dolphins really in some uncomfortable situations laid out, prone on the field.

23:00And this guy has been asked by beat writers in his own locker room, is this safe for you to keep playing? And he wants to keep doing it. Now, I think as far as the business of the league goes, I think the danger is going to be obviously in the insurance costs, but also in sort of the long tail. Yeah. Whether or not this is going to turn off parents again, I remember when I was covering the New England Patriots, Roger Goodell's wife, she made an appearance and talked to moms about how in New York City at the time she would go to a cocktail party and people would react quite negatively when she talked about her family's affiliation with football.

23:47This is right around the time of concussion stories being very, very prevalent. And you do wonder if parents are going to be reconsidering this new science. I mean, the thing of it is, is the science keeps hardening around this, but the valuations and the business of the NFL keeps growing and growing and growing. So we haven't seen, it's obviously very early, but we haven't seen an impact yet. But I do wonder about the long tail for the NFL and kids playing the game.

24:19As a fan yourself, do you have any predictions for this season or do you leave all that to the prediction markets, to Cal Shee and Polly Market? No, I don't leave that to the prediction markets. I saw a stat the other day that said something like 25% of Gen Z was putting their money behind prediction markets. And this is long-term money. This is like your 401k money. They were putting it into sports betting. And the Wall Street Journal looked into it and something like 70% of the profits on prediction markets are made by 0.1% of bettors.

24:57So, no, I'm not going to make any prognostications other than I'll be watching a lot of Big Ten football this year, which I'm really excited about. And after back-to-back nine-win seasons for my Illini, I went to the University of Illinois. So I'm closely watching the Illini and going to have a lot of fun doing it. Well, we'll be watching along with you and the NFL and reading along with you on Steel Cut, your new sub stack. Thanks, Bob. Michelle, thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me.

25:28This was a lot of fun.

25:30I appreciate that Michelle acknowledges her fandom. I'm a diehard sports fan, too. My dad taking me to Jets games at the Old Shea Stadium as a kid is among my most potent memories. The NFL has become must-watch TV, and it's so entertaining. There's a reason billions of dollars flow in. To be honest, though, I do find myself having to suppress uncomfortable thoughts about player safety. Even before the latest CTE study, NFL players are gladiators.

26:02But are they gladiators like in the old days of the Coliseum? Are we making sport of people endangering themselves for our enjoyment? The players themselves are unlikely to decry the NFL as exploitation because, of course, it's their livelihood. And the wealth of owners getting ever-higher valuations for their teams enables them to keep sharing more of the profits with players, which makes the loop that much harder to break. Still, safety is the soft underbelly in the NFL's business model, and hopefully the league will keep taking genuine steps to limit the risks on players.

26:38In the meantime, yes, I'll keep watching games. The fun outweighs the fears, and with every new season, hope is everywhere. So who's calling the first coin toss? I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.

26:57Rapid Response is a Wait What original. I'm Bob Safian. Our executive producer is Eve Trow. Our senior producer is Alex Morris, and our associate producer is Masha Makutonina. Mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastinelli and Brian Pugh. Our theme music is by Ryan Holiday. For more, visit RapidResponseShow.com.

27:27I'm Bob Safian. I'm Bob Safian. We'll be there. We'll be there.