Word: nfl
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...there is a third view of Rozelle espoused by those who watched him work: he was an iron-willed tycoon who created the business model for all of professional sports. In addition, he figured out a way to make the NFL far more valuable than other sports, including the national pastime, baseball. Rozelle recognized that a sporting event was more than a game--it was a valuable piece of programming. Such media moguls as Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch have used that strategy to build entire networks. Rozelle, however, did them one better. In the long-winded discussions about...
...from the newly formed American Football League, bankrolled by one of the richest men in America, Lamar Hunt. Rozelle's first trick, one that Rockefeller would have admired, was to put an end to the unprofitable competition. In 1962 he traveled to Washington and persuaded Congress to grant the NFL the first of two exemptions to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The exemption enabled Rozelle to fold the two leagues into a single, albeit fragmented, business...
...know, was wonderful new bargaining power. The new revenues went into promoting the game and grabbing an ever greater slice of the entertainment business. "When the networks put up as much money as they did for the rights, they felt they had to promote the game," says NFL spokesman Joe Browne. "And by promoting the game, the game grew." Back in 1960, when the 33-year-old Rozelle accepted the job as NFL commissioner, the combined revenues of the NFL and the franchises were less than $20 million. The NFL this year projects combined revenues of nearly $4 billion. Similarly...
...eulogy of Rozelle in January 1997, Arledge said that a president of a sports division negotiating with Pete Rozelle and the NFL had "about as much clout as the Dalai Lama has dealing with the Chinese army." What he failed to mention was that Rozelle had created the army...
...understood, somewhat ironically, that the key to attracting fans was fierce competition on the field, and that the key to fierce competition was every team's having roughly the same amount of money to spend on players. To that end Rozelle persuaded NFL owners--two dozen raving megalomaniacs--to share their television spoils equally. While there still remains a discrepancy between the richest franchise (Dallas) and the poorest (Indianapolis), the difference is a fraction of that in other pro sports...