I recall back in the 90’s when I was growing up that baseball
was such a popular sport. It was more
popular than all of the other major sports in the U.S. It was referred to as America’s pastime. As I grew older, I began to enjoy and
appreciate football much more. There was
a transition over a decade or so, for many reasons, where football was gaining
more attention whereas baseball was losing fans. In the end, football had risen to the top of
the list in terms of most popular sport in America. The primary reason is due to management in
the National Football League (NFL) and the strategic decisions that they’ve
made. They mastered the recipe for
success. So they just need to stand pat,
right? My theory falls in line with the old
saying “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”
The NFL disagrees. Instead of
enjoying their time at the top making money, they’re pushing for global
expansion in the European market.
A few
of the readings we had this week deal with global markets. The article “What Happens Next?” talks about
the global grid as one of the five crucibles of innovation stating that “the
most innovative organizations will be those who harness the global grid.” Also, the article “Going from Global Trends
to Corporate Strategy” talks about two trends occurring in global
business. One is the growing number of
customers. The other is the shift of economic
activity between regions.
So how does this fit in with the
NFL? Well, it appears that they are
trying to be innovative. The
commissioner, Roger Goodell, has a vision.
He wants the NFL to make 25 billion dollars by 2027. Currently the NFL makes approximately 9
billion per year. They already have a
test base with playing games in other countries. They’ve played exhibition games in London,
Japan, Mexico and Canada with great success.
The potential of the growing number of customers is large if they can
land a team in London. They feel as
though they have tapped out the U.S. market since 180 million (two thirds of
all Americans) watching the Super Bowl last year.
The NFL’s management team has been
great at taking this sport to the top in the U.S. The strategic decisions that they have made
have paid off big time, but sometimes greed can cloud even the brightest of
minds. There are so many reasons not to
do it. The cost of travel. The inconvenience for the players to travel
(especially the teams on the West Coast). The NFL might have to expand to more than 32
teams, which would completely mess up the divisions and playoff structure as
well as dilute the talent. They’d have to compete with local soccer teams
for fans. There are just too many risks. And if you consider some of the risks along
the value chain that were discussed in the “Risk: Seeing Around the Corners”
article, you don’t have to know football to understand that there are many. They might be so focused on making as much money
as possible that they overlook the fact that changing too many things may lead
to disinterest amongst fans. It happened
in baseball and no one could’ve predicted that.
Hopefully they can see through their greed to determine if expanding to
London will benefit the NFL in the long term and stay America’s pastime well
into the future.
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