Overview of NFL Kickoff: the science gets more damning, but the money keeps growing
Bob Safian talks with sports business journalist Michelle Steele about the NFL heading into the new season: why the league’s business remains so dominant, how media fragmentation is changing fan behavior, why quarterback pay keeps rising, and how the league is leaning into new growth strategies like international games and the “Taylor Swift effect.” The conversation also returns to the sport’s most serious issue—player safety and CTE—and whether the league’s financial growth can coexist with mounting evidence of long-term harm.
NFL’s business remains dominant, but the gap is narrowing
League value and scarcity
- Steele argues the NFL is still the top sports business, but the NBA is closing the gap in team valuations and market appeal.
- High-end franchise sales, like the Lakers’ blockbuster valuation, show how valuable elite sports assets have become.
- Her core point: scarcity drives value. There are only a handful of truly premium NFL and NBA franchises, which keeps prices extremely high.
Sports as entertainment’s center of gravity
- She notes that sports has become the center of the entertainment universe, with NFL programming occupying an increasingly large share of top TV content.
- The NFL is effectively the league that can command the biggest audience, the most media attention, and the most leverage in negotiations.
Streaming fragmentation is good for revenue, harder for fans
- The league now spreads games across multiple platforms: CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, ESPN, YouTube TV, and more.
- Steele says this is financially smart for the league, but it is annoying and costly for fans, especially hardcore viewers who don’t want to chase games across services.
- Her warning: treating teams and leagues like pure assets can backfire if fans feel mistreated.
- Casual fans may be fine with clips and highlights, but the NFL still depends on its diehards.
Stadium politics: the Bears and the leverage game
Chicago vs. Indiana
- The Chicago Bears’ possible move to Indiana is framed as a stadium leverage play.
- Steele believes the team is primarily trying to secure a new stadium deal and public subsidies, not necessarily make a clean break from Chicago.
Why it matters
- A Bears departure would have symbolic weight; she compares it to the impact of the Jets and Giants leaving New York.
- At the same time, she notes most fans are watching from home, so location matters more for identity and civic pride than day-to-day consumption.
- She’s skeptical of the economics in Northwest Indiana, especially for a mixed-use development that depends on discretionary spending.
Her prediction
- Her personal view: the Bears are likely to stay at Soldier Field for years to come.
International games are about expansion and media rights
- The NFL’s record number of overseas games is partly about creating new fans, but mostly about expanding inventory and media value.
- Steele sees the international push as tied to the league’s long-term strategy to sell NFL football as a global product.
- A team based abroad, while discussed publicly, feels impractical to her—especially given travel logistics and resistance from players.
- Any major expansion would likely require collective bargaining concessions and likely more money for players.
Quarterback salaries reflect the logic of the league
- Steele says the NFL is a quarterback league, so it makes sense that quarterbacks absorb so much of the salary cap.
- The position is uniquely scarce: only a small number of people can truly do it at the highest level.
- She notes that the rising salary cap has benefited other positions too:
- running backs are getting paid more again
- offensive linemen have seen major increases because protecting the QB is essential
- Her takeaway: there’s little evidence of locker-room resentment because players understand the economics.
Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, and the league’s growth audience
The “WAG strategy”
- Steele says the NFL has very deliberately amplified coverage of players’ partners and families.
- This is part of a broader effort to grow the league’s appeal among women, who are seen as an important audience segment for continued growth.
Why it works
- The NFL is a mature property, so growth now depends on new emotional entry points.
- Human-interest storytelling, family narratives, and celebrity crossover help widen the audience.
- She says the Taylor Swift–Travis Kelce relationship didn’t invent the trend, but it accelerated it.
Player safety remains the league’s soft underbelly
The CTE problem
- Safian raises the new CTE report suggesting that around one in four NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had CTE.
- Steele emphasizes that CTE is linked less to single big hits than to cumulative impacts over time.
Has football actually gotten safer?
- Her answer: maybe somewhat, but not conclusively.
- She points to:
- independent neurologists
- stricter concussion protocols
- more accountability in-game
- But high-profile cases like Tua Tagovailoa show the issue is far from resolved.
The long-term risk
- The biggest business threat may not be immediate revenue loss, but the long tail:
- higher insurance costs
- parents reconsidering youth football
- renewed cultural discomfort with the sport
- Steele says the science keeps getting more damning even as the NFL’s financial engine keeps growing.
Main takeaways
- The NFL is still the most powerful sports property, but it’s increasingly operating like a multi-platform media machine.
- The league’s growth strategy depends on:
- more distribution
- international expansion
- celebrity and lifestyle crossover
- continued quarterback-driven storytelling
- Yet player safety remains the unresolved moral and business risk beneath everything else.
Closing thought
The episode ends on a familiar NFL tension: fans love the spectacle, the drama, and the money-making machine, even while worrying about the cost to players’ bodies and brains. Steele and Safian both acknowledge that contradiction—and admit they’ll keep watching anyway.