As the NFL gets set for its first game in Brazil tonight, Commissioner Roger Goodell has made several media appearances, talking private equity ownership with CNBC and the likelihood of a post-Super Bowl holiday on Today.
The Philadelphia Eagles-Green Bay Packers game, which will stream exclusively on Peacock, is an effort to expose America’s top sport to a market with 38 million fans.
Goodell, speaking to reporters on Thursday, said the league hopes to significantly expand its current slate of games outside the U.S., which has seen teams take the field in Mexico, London and Frankfurt to date. A move to 18 regular-season games, from the current level of 17, will be key to that international push, the commissioner said.
On Friday morning on CNBC, Goodell was asked if a recent decision to allow private equity ownership of teams could mean more selling of teams. “I think it’s actually the exact opposite,” he said. The NFL studied other leagues’ interactions with private equity, which typically looks to maximize investments and then exit within a few years. In opening its ownership rules, the NFL capped P.E. firms at 10% of individual team ownership, Goodell noted. “The 10 percent private equity interest will have a very silent role. There’s no role of management. They don’t even take suggestions from unless, you know, the team wants to say, can you help us with X or Y? So I think the reality here, this is going to support our family ownership programs throughout the league. It will give them a chance to get some liquidity, which they can use to invest back in their team, their facilities, however they see fit. So I really believe it’s going to strengthen our position.”
In a separate appearance on the Today show, Goodell helped beat the drum for Peacock and gamely fielded yet another Taylor Swift question. Asked about a long-discussed scenario for when the league does get to 18 games. Adding a game would push the season another week, making the Super Bowl in most years coincide with Presidents Day weekend, with a Monday holiday after the game. “I think the will is there in many ways,” he affirmed, but expanding to an 18-game season will require negotiations between the players’ union and team owners.
An 18-game regular season would reduce the number of pre-season games in August to two. Historically, there were at least four. The league moved to a 17-game season from 16 in 2021, trimming the preseason to three.
“People look at the preseason and the regular season and say, ‘Would I like to have one more regular season and one less preseason?’ I think the answer to that is yes,” he said.
