What we can learn from the National Football League (NFL)

Australian Sport, Rugby League, NFL, WWE

Fresh from a weekend of NFL coverage, I am stuck wondering why their product is as popular as it is.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the NFL. I soak in as much as Fox Sports and Pretend ESPN will give me on a week to week basis. I play fantasy football, I read Peter King, and I wake up at 6am on Mondays to watch the games live (Remember, I work nights, write columns in the afternoon, and go to Uni twice a week; anything that gets me up before midday must be good).

So even more perplexing than my original reservation—if I can see the flaws, why do I love the product so much?

And there are plenty of flaws. To be concise, American football is boring. Between the plethora of commercial breaks, timeouts, TV timeouts, penalties, replay reviews, measurements, pointless sideline banter, officials meetings, and inane and inexplicable celebrations, watching a 60 minute game—which runs near 3 hours—is a test of patience for anyone.

But people do watch, and in the hundreds of millions each week they do. From what I can gather, those people are watching for two reasons: a strong dose of weekly patriotism, and to follow the leagues story lines.

The first is the biggest draw card for the NFL. The league does everything in its power to associate itself with American life, and it is arguable it has achieved a cultural reach beyond that of any other entity.

Raking in over 6 billion dollars annually, the NFL is [USA] nationally recognized as the biggest sport in America, and one of the single most profitable leagues in the world. Operating in some form since the late 1800’s, the game has been a constant in the ever changing scenery that is American history. Because of this, the game has become more than a weekend activity. It is an integral part of American culture, implementing itself as a stable part of American Sundays, Monday nights, Thanksgivings, Christmas’, and New Years days. The championship game—the super bowl—is nationally accepted as a public holiday.

It bleeds stars and stripes, it supports all the national issues (Katrina, the troops, the fight against childhood obesity), and it projects a image that gives self worth and hope to a wholly depressed and internationally hated nation.

So for a U.S. citizen not to support the NFL, they are basically announcing, they don’t support America. Its sad, but its fact, and in the end most people are watching probably because they feel they should, rather than they want too. Baseball used to command that kind of guilt, and now football does.

The second draw card (and I guess the main reason I watch), the extremely compelling story lines. Excessive, character driven, over-dramatized, and most importantly, never ending, the weekly soap opera that is the NFL is the best show on TV.

Every drama series would love to have the mix of action the NFL provides. A plethora of dynamic stars, the endless pressure of winning, the constant coloration of money, the quantitative squabbles, the notoriety and the trouble that causes, the groupies, the always present threat of drugs, rookies, contracts, coaches, insubordinates, trades and crossed loyalty—it’s all there. Couple that with the violent encounters to settle it all at the end of the week and you are left with the proverb—you cant write this stuff!

Like I said, I can’t get enough. To the point where I feel I enjoy the build up throughout the week more than the actual games themselves. If the NFL were The Usual Suspects, the media frenzy during the week would be the 2 hours prior to the climatic scene (the games) in which we witness Kevin Spacey’s feet blow our minds.

So I guess, now that I have thought about it, I’m just a sucker for great marketing. The NFL knows that advertising money is their bread and butter (that’s why they started the NFL Network); that money is determined by how many ads you run during a specific broadcast, so they found every conceivable way to fit in more ads. This over saturation of ads created their current situation: a game broadcast in-between ads, rather than ads broadcast in-between a game. Realizing the unattractive nature of a diluted product, the NFL set out to distract the viewers from the on field product by embracing everything off the field.

Rather than shying away from off the field incidents, the NFL has positioned itself—while not endorsing the deviant actions of their players—as a rich source of media headlines. The forced press conferences, the unyielding coverage, the locker room access, the loyalty challenging nature of the franchise tag, the obsessive requirement of injury reports, the nakedness of the NFL sideline, sideline reporters, the open principals office nature in which they discipline, the controversial fines, the easily solvable yet remaining-ly over-complicated rule book, HBO’s Hard knocks, NFL.com, Sirus NFL radio…the list goes on. It’s all there to either provoke discussion or preach the discussion. Anything that takes the viewers focus of the field and places it on the sideline, the NFL has a interest in.

By embracing the media, the NFL controls how the stories are going to be released. The league knows those stories will be broken anyway, so they figure: why not break them their way. Like cigarette companies shifted the focus of smokers away from the negative aspects (the health risks) of their product in the 60s, the NFL has done the same. It truly is marketing at its finest.

So what we have learned about the NFL is—it’s popular because it is a great product. The modern pro game isn’t, but the NFL is. I can see the flaws; anyone can if they look hard enough. The NFL just does a great job blocking our view.

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And what is there to learn from the NFL?

EVERYTHING if you are the NRL.

Providing a product that exhibits the same fundamental strengths that the NFL has thrived on (violence, an ingrained history, national stars), the NRL—unfortunately—has the disadvantage of a must faster, free flowing game structure. Primarily that means less opportunity to insert ads—a good thing for fans; a bad thing for the NRL’s bottom line.

The NRL is too reliant on the on field product to attract people to the game. They cannot afford to dilute their product with advertisements. Unlike the NFL, the NRL doesn’t have the same quantitative draw cards (excessive scouting and fantasy football). The nature of a rugby league game means the NRL’s box score has little significance past time of possession, tackles made, and points scored. Not to the public at least.

With this said, the NRL can still benefit from a reformed attitude towards the media. By embracing the marketing platform the media provides, the NRL controls the media. They need to feed the beast. Namely, by embracing—but never endorsing—the off-field antics of their stars. By pretending they don’t exist, the NRL is wasting opportunities to create more headlines, shift the NRL further into the greater social conscience, and give the casual fan an emotional reason to care.

Sure, on the surface this approach draws skepticism, but I would argue “all press is good press”, when you embrace the media.

The best example of the media’s power is the rise to infamous-y (I made that up) experienced by Willie Mason. First the media loved him. He was the new kid on the block—big, strong, the future of rugby league. They built him up high.

Then came the rape allegations, the salary cap scandal, and the gangland associations that began to influence the famed Bulldog culture. Classic drama, the media needed a face to represent the Bulldogs, and Mason was the tallest of poppies. If Australia had been the WWF, the media would be Vince MCMahon (the capitalist puppet master), and Willie Mason would be Hulk Hogan (a notorious “good guy” who turned “evil” when the time was right; namely, the expansion of pro-wrestling with the establishment of the WCW).

Luckily for the media and the NRL (although they would never admit it), Mason embraced his new role. First by bringing the Bulldogs together by embracing a “us against them” mentality, then by subtly telling the media (and the Australian public) to fuck off, before finally defying all odds and beating the golden boys of the NRL (a Brad Fittler led Roosters side) to win the 2004 premiership. At this point he was both the most hated man in the NRL, and their biggest draw card.

His rematches with the bulldogs, his controversial comments on the league, his nightlife behavior, his role within the bulldogs—love him or hate him (and I do hate him despite this column), everyone wanted to know what would happen next.

And that’s what we learn from the NFL. It not just what happens next on the field, it’s what happens next off the field as well. In today’s multi-tasking world, keeping the market’s attention is more complex than playing a competitive game on weekends. A league needs to be in the markets conscience daily. The NRL can’t expect the market to go looking for their product.

And that’s what they need to be: a good product. Not just a good game.