The author of “Every Day Is Sunday” and The New York Times insider for the business of the NFL joins us for a discussion about the state of the game and why the Baltimore Ravens are playing in Brazil next month. Ken Belson returns for another preseason football chat about the past, present and future of the sport with Nestor just in time for kickoff and a violent Sunday collision coming to you soon.
The discussion examined how the NFL has evolved into a media and business juggernaut, with Ken explaining the financial logic, governance culture, and unresolved risks shaping the league’s future.
League Model
- Ken said the NFL increasingly functions as a media company whose product is football, prioritizing TV inventory, packaging, and audience reach over the in-stadium experience.
- He contrasted older football-first family owners with newer billionaire owners and executives focused on finance, liability, and marketing.
Key Risks
- Ken argued player health remains the league’s biggest existential issue, citing past concealment of concussion risks, the large settlement with former players, and the league’s strategy of shifting the narrative toward safety improvements.
- Nestor raised parallel concerns about misconduct, accountability, and whether the league can continue buying its way out of legal and reputational crises.
Open Questions
- Ken expects more monetization through longer seasons, more playoff inventory, international media packages, team-owned content studios, and stadium-centered real estate development.
- What will meaningfully constrain the NFL: player safety, public backlash, global expansion challenges, or nothing while media demand and guaranteed revenue keep rising?
- Read further into ‘Every Day Is Sunday’ (beyond page 209) and prepare highlighted notes from the 300s to reference when appearing again on the show.
- Ensure next week’s WNST AM 1570 Towson, Baltimore ‘Baltimore Positive’ show continues to feature coverage of the upcoming football game. (@Nestor Aparicio)
NFL as a media business
- Ken described the NFL as a media company built around football games.
- The league prioritizes broadcast inventory, advertiser value, and television reach.
- He noted that many owners now approach the league differently than earlier football-centered families.
Player health and liability
- Nestor emphasized brain trauma, dementia, and long-term physical harm as core moral issues for the league.
- Ken said the NFL hid or minimized risks for years, later settling major litigation with former players.
- He argued the league used research, messaging, and safety initiatives to change the public narrative.
Growth, gambling, and expansion
- Ken said likely next moves include an 18-game or longer season, more playoff inventory, and broader international media packaging.
- He explained that gambling revenue mainly reaches the league through sponsorships and sale of official data feeds, not direct betting participation.
- He said overseas franchises remain difficult because of logistics, taxes, passports, and player lifestyle concerns.
Ownership economics and culture
- Ken said NFL teams are profitable before the season starts because national media revenue covers major costs.
- The conversation highlighted how team value, guaranteed revenue, and league status shape owner behavior and public accountability.
- Ken also pointed to team-run content studios and stadium-area real estate projects as major future revenue drivers.
Nestor Aparicio 0:01
Welcome home. We are WMST. AM 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We call this thing Baltimore Positive. We’re in the football season around here, and I, I love when I get the serious guests on. We’re going to get back to doing the Maryland crab cake tour. We’ll give out some some Maryland lottery scratch offs. Our friends at GBMC, and of course Farnham and Derm are putting us out on the road so I can drink beer and eat crab cakes, or maybe some orange crushes. I don’t know. It depends. Probably not baseball season at this point. This guy writes books. I love having serious journalists on. We’ve had him on at the beginning of his the book cycle. I have notes in here. Every day is Sunday. It’s about ownership in the NFL, primarily Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft and the current regime of Roger Goodell as they are almost on their way out. As I prepared for this, I was reading about Jerry Richardson’s exit a few years ago, chapter 11 here, up to page 209. Ken Bellson is here. He is a longtime reporter, but not a sports nerd at all. I mean, traveled around Tokyo, did all sorts of reporting. Actually, worked in the news side at the New York Times, so real journalist and a Pulitzer trail as well. It’s always good to have you back on, my brother. How are you, man? Do you still have a press credential? I’m trying to figure out who does and who doesn’t, because I mean, I’m you pissed them all off with this one. I’m sure you did, right?
Ken Belson 1:16
Yeah. So I, you know, look, the Times is not a sports newspaper, and we don’t have direct affiliations with the leagues. We’re not partners with them in any way, and so I do my job. I have never been shut out of meetings, owners’ meetings. I mean, do I get leaked information spoon fed to me? Nope, not from the league, and that’s okay. I don’t work for them, and I try and do what I can from the outside.
Nestor Aparicio 1:44
All right, so you’ve written books on all of this, and I know you not well enough, but well enough to that we know each other. If I ran into you in airport lounge or sat next to you in a plane, and you said, “Hey, I’ve covered the NFL for you know number years, and I write books on it or whatever, I’m like, “Oh, I’m a fan. I’m a fan of the Ravens. I got a ticket on PSL. Whatever I got to say, what do I need to know about the league? I mean, what what would you say top down that doesn’t look? I’m the village prick here, right? Because I poke at them about Justin Tucker and you know everything back to Ray Lewis and everything through and the PSLs and all the money they’ve taken. I can get on to all of that, but what do you say to people from the top down? Not about Steve Bashawio the Ravens, but the league itself as an entity.
8
Ken Belson 2:24
Yeah, I think the league is increasingly a media company. It’s it’s a media company with a product known as football games. The way they act, the way they invest, the way they package their product. Roger Goodell has pointed out, and he’s not incorrect. 97% of NFL fans never go to a game, and I know the the diehards who are there every Sunday, who you know wear the face paint and do the tailgating. They’ve turned into props. You know, if you you’ve been to games, I’ve been to games. There’s only about 11 to 12 minutes of actual playing during a three-hour broadcast. There’s a lot of timeouts. There’s TV timeouts. There’s mandated timeouts, and and that’s fine if you’re sitting at home. It is a very compelling product, but that’s very different than the John Maras and the Art Rooneys of old, who considered it a trust. You know, you played Sunday at 1p.m. because you went to mass, came over to the stadium. You played your game at 1o’clock, and you were home by dinner. That was football, and those that generation of owners who were football first has has diminished. There are fewer and fewer of them. Mike Brown in Cincinnati is one. The Rooney family, to a large degree, the Marras. When you talk to them, it’s a very different kind of conversation than when you talk to the money folks who have come in, say in the last 25 years.
Nestor Aparicio 3:46
I don’t know where you were when Howard KoCell had his Tex Cobb moment. You know, I was like 1314, years old, and all I ever wanted to do was this work. All I ever wanted to do was be John Stebbin, be a sports writer, love sports. I pimp for them to get the stadium, this stadium built, and the other stadium built. I’ve been on the air 35 years. This December, I’ve been in this business 42 years. I was in the business when the Colts were still here as a kid, and and I have all the belt buckles on the wall from my childhood with the Houston Oilers and the St. Louis Cardinals and the San Diego Chargers and the Oakland. You know all the things that don’t exist anymore, honestly. And I. I, I guess for me, when I think of my love for the league, and as I get older, and I’ve covered the league, this is the 30th year of the Ravens. Kind of hard to for some people to believe. 1996, 30 years ago, September 1, it’ll be Ray Lewis putting on the jersey, Memorial Stadium, Art Mode, Vinny Testaverde, all of that. I’ve got a lot of dead guys from that team. O.J. Brigantz just died this week of ALS. What the league does to brains. I remember Jim Otto coming and showing me the holes in his knees. I remember Conrad Dobler coming over at the Super Bowl. Crutches and just all torn apart. I see Baldinger’s finger. I, you know, the violence of the game for me as I get further along and know that Goose is dead and that there’s a player on the Super Bowl 35 team that is dement that is clearly into a dementia state into whatever we saw about with the movie that was made a few years ago that they that they push off, I still think the original sin is the brain damage and the kid almost dying on the field in Cincinnati a couple years ago. I still think that that that eats at all of their souls, sort of the way Epstein goes over Trump to some degree. Like there’s some really bad juju with this league, and I don’t mean Smith Schuster.
Ken Belson 5:42
Yeah, no, sadly, and and this was it’s interesting in the course of writing the book, and it is a business book. It talks about their TV deals and their stadiums and all the teams moving, like you mentioned. I insisted that there be a chapter on player safety and health, or really player health, or lack of it in some cases, because that is probably their biggest existential crisis over the last, say, 30 years, maybe 40 years. If you go back, you know, Wayne Krebret, Altun players getting paralyzed on the field. This stuff happens, and it’s more than just an industrial disease. It’s promoted, or was for a long time, with with videos and you know the hard hits and the crunches and the the EA Madden game. You know, knocking a guy’s block off. This was celebrated, so you can’t argue that you’re making the game safer while you’re celebrating the violence inherent in it, and you know, and then then burying not just burying the ill effects or the long term effects of this kind of behavior, but actually putting out junk science, creating smoke screens. This was back in the 90s, kind of like saying you know menthol cigarettes aren’t nearly as bad as as you know, other cigarettes or filtered cigarettes are somehow safer than unfiltered cigarettes, and that changed. You know, because frankly, had the had they come clean and were honest with the players, it wouldn’t have led to a class action lawsuit that went is already up to 1,000,000,005 in terms of payouts. So what I found in the book, and this is where it relates to the business of the league, is it’s beyond just a marketing problem. But there’s a scene in the book on the the league is about to settle the case or announce the settlement with the 5000 players who sued the league, and Paul Hicks, who was the and they
Nestor Aparicio 7:39
sued the league for what? Just to to be clear,
Ken Belson 7:40
for hiding the for deliberately hiding, not just hiding it, but but you know fraudulently hiding the dangers of the sport to the players and advertising that don’t worry, like the coal
Nestor Aparicio 7:51
people telling the coal miners it’s okay to go in, right?
Ken Belson 7:54
Yeah, essentially, and so there’s this scene that there were depositions released, and which I found on a New York State docket, and that hadn’t been reported. So I this was in the one of the chapters in the book, and Paul Hicks goes into Roger Dell goes into Paul Hicks’s door. Paul Hicks was an outside consultant who had worked for the league for five years, and he says they’re going to announce this settlement. You know, Paul. What do you think of it? And he he basically says, “Well, look, you know that it’s better because we don’t want the players on the stand. You know, a jury looking at a at a player with dementia, early onset of dementia, is not going to help us in court. So the settlement is a reasonable solution. And then he says to Roger, but it’s not my money, so you know. And Roger kind of chuckles and leaves, and that tells you a lot about like this was a practical way to get around it. A billion and a half divided by 32 teams over 15 years so far, 10 years so far. You know, this is a rounding error for these guys, and so the league has essentially bought its way out of the crisis, and sadly, a lot of news organizations stopped writing about it once there was a settlement. And so, player health is not nearly the story it was when Junior Seau committed suicide. Obviously, all the way back to Mike Webster and the player you just mentioned. Not to mention
8Nestor Aparicio 9:19
players killing their wives, right, or killing their children, or you know what happened in Kansas City, you know that scarred that that still scars that franchise, even though they’re in glory era now. Not to mention the stadiums and the money, and we’ll get into all that. But I just, I, I, um, I feel like the crime part of this, right? The Justin Tucker thing here, where he was a serial predator here for a decade. The team knew about it for sure, and I mean, I know the team knew about it. And it’s just been it’s been a year and a half. They got rid of him, got brought a kicker in. Nobody picks him up. Nobody says a word. They bring a woman in to investigate it. That looks like she has something. They put a press release. Out and there’s nobody admits to anything, nobody says anything, and it just never happened. Except these women here were literally stalked for anyone who was a female massage therapist around here got some breath of Justin Tucker around here, and it that then the team tries to intimidate the reporters who reported it-that’s where we are in 2020. Like it’s stuff that boggles my mind as a lifer journalist, Ken. But they’re getting away with all right. There, there’s nothing they can’t buy out of, sue out of, legal out of, in any way, right? I mean, there’s no anti-trust. They’re going to put franchises all over the world at some point soon, right? So there, there’s nothing holding them back, right? Like literally, I think about the wind is always sort of at their back, right?
Ken Belson 10:47
Well, it’s a you know if you’re a billionaire, it’s a good time to be an NFL owner. But look, your experience, I’m sure, will corroborate this. But the league is essentially run by lawyers and marketing people. There, of course, is a football, you know, their football specialists, the Troy Vincents of the world, and all that, because that is their product. But at the end of the day, their their body language is: let’s limit liability, let’s make it go away one way or the other in court, or you know, or through settlements, and and then market change subject, move on to something else. Again, in the same in the same documents I mentioned, where around 2013, the NFL a couple years prior to that unveiled the same guy, Paul Hicks, the strategist, unveiled a big plan to a lot of the people, the executives of the league, and he said, “Look, we are going to turn into boxing if we don’t change this narrative, the number of players hurting themselves, killing themselves, hurting other people-it’s just we’re going to be marginalized. People are going to turn away from the game, and most importantly, moms are going to put their kids into soccer and golf and something else, and that’s going to hurt us all the time. We need to change the narrative, and he laid out a plan. Basically, we need to tell people we’re proactive on technology, on helmets, and all this stuff. We need to be putting money into research, all these things to look like that. And then we are making the game safer. Now, technically, that’s true. Is it ever going to be safe? No, because that’s the nature of the game. And I went back and looked at some of the things he talked about in 2010, and realized that I had actually reported about them over the years, and and somewhat skeptically, I say, including teaching moms how to tackle safely, as if that would make them more reassure them that their kids could do it as well. It was almost comical those things that they put on, but they were. I realized actually going back to this 2010 document that it was all very deliberate. So that’s what I mean by you know being run by lawyers and marketing people. They have shifted the narrative, and since the settlement, you know, you hear announcers talking about concussions. There’s obviously the blue tent, but it’s now just part of the fabric of the game, and nobody seems to be “quote unquote” shocked by it anymore.
Nestor Aparicio 13:06
And the money’s bloated. Ken Belson is here. He writes books and he writes things about the business of the National Football League. His book is “Every Day Is Sunday: How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell Turn the NFL into a Cultural and Economic Juggernaut. I’m on page 209. How do you look? You can’t write the history of the league without Baltimore to some degree, right? So you know the the focus on all of this in regard to Jerry Richardson or the Colts or the Colts leaving or how all of that that and Al Davis kind of begat the modern NFL. All of that is ancient, ancient history now. Where gambling, gambling, gambling, five day a week football is going to be a thing. International football is very much a thing. The 18th game is going to be a thing. You know, they’ve couched this preseason thing to kind of not make it as six games like when we were kids, or four bad games or one decent game and three bad games. That is kind of do away with it. What’s the next thing for them? I mean, I I I keep thinking like, are AIs here? I’m learning things. What what are what can they possibly do other than build a bigger, better stadium in the suburbs of Chicago or Kansas City, like I guess London, Frankfurt, Madrid, Sydney, whatever they’re going to do at that point. But I keep thinking to myself, are they going to do the $100 pay per view on the Super Bowl? Like, what’s the next crazy thing they’re going to come up with that I haven’t heard of? Because I don’t think they’re going to. Most of it’s it’s diagrammed, right? This international thing, the 18 games. What’s the thing I don’t even know about?
Ken Belson 14:41
Yeah, no, you’re you’re you’re absolutely right, and I think at some point they’ll get to 20 games. We’re not there yet. There’ll be the kids now, not even at 18 yet. But I can see a world in which essentially the preseason is an extended workout. College
Nestor Aparicio 14:56
hasn’t played preseason ever, right? Like they don’t they don’t need it.
Ken Belson 15:00
Yeah, and and actually, teams and coaches will tell you that they get more out of these team on team practices where you can isolate certain players against other players and really figure out if that’s your cornerback, as opposed to playing him in a couple of series where he may not get a touch. And so, yeah, you know, I can see that happening. I also can see them adding a round to the playoffs. Something you know, it’s already long. It’s got four rounds, and that’s just printing money, right? Because you’re just increasing inventory. The Super Bowl,
Nestor Aparicio 15:33
by the way, is Valentine’s Day this year. Yes, and like they’ve moved that back now into President’s Day jewelry. Valentine’s Day. I mean, how bad in spring? Yeah, you know what I mean. Like literally, I
8Ken Belson 15:45
can see it going at least another week out because President’s Weekend is the week after Valentine’s Day, and yeah, you own. It’s not just. It’s interesting, you know. If you’re in the TV world, sweeps weeks are huge. That’s where Fox and everybody gets out there. NBC, they all have these sort of road shows for advertisers, and they say, “Here’s what we have coming the next season. Well, that’s why you need the NFL, right? Because we’re going to be hosting the Super Bowl at the end of this year, this end of the season. So you might want to plunk your money down, Mister Advertiser, with us. And so, the more, more that that happens, you know, more inventory of football games, the more likely you you have stuff to sell to advertisers, basically. So that’s why going all the way back to the beginning, how the league is thinking more and more like a media company, and soon it will swallow up the Academy Awards. Will at some point they’ll you know like the NBA on Christmas, and now they’re they’re freaking out because the NFL is on Christmas. You’re going to see the Academy Awards sort of somehow skip back into March or some other weekend to not compete with the NFL. And I I think that’s that’s where we are. The NFL is a juggernaut. International is a whole other conversation. There’s just so many more steps to having a franchise overseas, and frankly, they’re not even done with the experiment of playing games overseas. They’ve been road testing all these stadiums. You know, there’s all sorts of issues with obviously time zones, taxes. Do free agents want to sign to play in London when their kids are in school in Tennessee? Probably not. You know why? Because the grandparents aren’t going to be around. You know the wife doesn’t want to go. There’s 100. It’s easier
Nestor Aparicio 17:27
to play in Green Bay,
Ken Belson 17:28
yeah, or yeah, or anywhere in America. Frankly, I mean, look, I went to Seattle. I went with Seattle, the Seahawks, to London in 2018. Traveled with the team, kind of embedded with the team, if you will, two thirds of the team did not have passports. Okay, so in June they had to take a bunch of the players. The roster wasn’t even done yet, right? Because it’s only June. They’re in OTAs, and they got like 50 or 60 guys. They got an INS guy, an immigration guy, to come in and help them fill out all the paperwork. So these are 2223, 24 year old guys that never been overseas. Do they suddenly want to? Hey, you know, I’ll go to Barcelona, right? I mean, no. I mean, yes, some, but it’s just a big hurdle or hassle, and so so that’s one of the many reasons why it’s a bit of a pipe dream. It’s going to be quite a few years. I’m not saying it won’t happen, but there are many, many things to iron out before then.
Nestor Aparicio 18:26
But the appetite’s insatiable, right?
Ken Belson 18:28
Yeah, but you can do that with TV, right? You can, you you know, your front end investment is teach kids how to play flag football in Scotland or the Netherlands or whatever. That’s cheap. Make them
Nestor Aparicio 18:39
come to America to play it, or make them show up in Frankfurt every other year to see to see it, right? Literally, yeah,
Ken Belson 18:45
yeah, right. Give them a taste of it, like when
8Nestor Aparicio 18:47
Rush goes on tour, or when a band goes, they they go over and you see it for a day, and
Ken Belson 18:51
yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 18:52
the rest you watch on TV, right? Yeah, literally,
Ken Belson 18:54
right. It’s it, you know, it’s the Rolling Stones concert tour, and then there’s the video that comes after it. The yeah, so you know you can do that. You could package a European TV package of all the games. Let’s say there’ll be a slate of eight games. A version of Netflix, maybe Netflix could do it because people have Netflix overseas too. YouTube, so on. The technology now allows you to do so much more. Right now, they have all these international TV deals with ITV in England, RTV in Germany, you know, and they’re relative peanuts. But if they could package them into a you know European tour, if you will, like Rush, an eight game tour through Europe, and all those games are available to you on Netflix in your time zones, well, that’s that’s going to be money that essentially doesn’t cost them anything to produce anything additional to produce.
Nestor Aparicio 19:48
Ken Bellson is here, longtime New York Times real reporter, business of the NFL. The book is Every Day Is Sunday. I always love having Ken on, and sometimes you’re elusive because you’re working on your next big thing. But I just wrote this down, and I guess I’m thinking out loud because of the Rubenstein thing here with the baseball team, and how completely checked out, out of touch, weird this cat is in regard to how bad I thought Angelos was. But Angelos was lived here, even though he was a curmudgeon and a real prick, and like all of that, he had a front face on it, and did grow up on a street corner in East Baltimore with a bar. These cats that own these teams now, or where they’ve moved to, where Jara was a normal guy from Oklahoma back in the day, and now he’s Jara. And when you go to his Jara world, it looks like something out of a spaceship. The self awareness or the lack thereof of executive Roger Goodell, who had pimples and showed up 35 years ago in the league offices making 100 grand, and now he’s got a billion dollars in the bank and is good for 50 to 80 million a year every year in income, literally, and walks up and down Park Avenue with people like he’s in a like like he’s a FIFA a president or something. The self awareness that I saw in the league in my 26 years of professionally covering until Chad Steele says I’m not a real journalist anymore, real journalist with an FCC license. I’m in business with Trump, but not the Ravens. Art Modell, even Larry Laquino with the Orioles here, even the minor league owners I’ve known, or sport owners, or people that got into sport for a reason, or or wanted to be involved. Even Angelo, she just wanted a, he he just wanted to be loved, even though he was unlovable. He thought owning the team would make him love Rubinstein. Just thought I’m going to be famous. They’re all going to love me. I’m going to have a. I’m going to sign autographs for the first time in my life. It’s amazing how you think people are billionaires that they have some evolved personality about them. Then you see Elon Musk and you realize, oh my God, that’s an eight year old boy with too much money, all these guys are. I mean, I saw Bishotti, who treated pissed in a regular urinal where I met him underneath Cole Fieldhouse 30 years ago, and now and and texts me my wife’s dying 15 years ago. Now is a billionaire on a yacht hanging out in Bimini and has people and handlers. And I remember when he was just Steve. Call me Steve. Now he’s mr. Bishotti. Now he’s checked out. Now he’s the prick when he does show up on the pub. It’s it’s a wrestling act, dude. And these guys at these owners’ meetings, if there there used to be some self awareness. I mean, I have pictures of me with all these owners in Baltimore 30 years ago, I think when you go from owning a team, you had a couple 100 million dollars, and you wanted to be perceived as not too big for your britches, and then you’re too big shoddy is what his friends call him, Steve Big Shotty, because all of these guys get big shot, and when your team’s worth 10 billion, I don’t, I I feel no self awareness from any of them from the top down. I mean, from ownership to the kind of presidents they hire, the kind of PR people, the kind of broadcasters, just all the way down, it feels like their brands are self. There, there’s no self awareness anymore for any of them.
Ken Belson 23:16
Well, I mean, this is true of billionaires writ large. You know, it’s it’s hard to be the billionaire around the corner or the billionaire at the corner bar because they are few and far between. Art
Nestor Aparicio 23:28
Rooney did it well, though, didn’t he? He was a good one.
8Ken Belson 23:30
Well, and and you know, to my point earlier about some of the older multi generational teams, own teams like the Steelers that you know they inherited their teams, so they don’t have like, I mean, they’re wealthy by most standards, but they they didn’t start a gigantic business and then buy a team. So you know, Art Rooney, John Mara are immensely approachable. They drive their own cars. They play golf. You know, play at nice clubs, but they play golf. Michael Bidwill. I remember I interviewed Michael Bidwill in Phoenix years ago, 10 years ago, and the PR guy said Michael will be at this restaurant and yada yada. Go there, and I go there, and it’s a diner, and he’s in a booth, and I’m looking around like, where’s the entourage or the PR? You know, it’s just Michael pulled up in his FUV and got out. I mean, we just sat in the restaurant. It was delightful in the sense that it was unvarnished, and there have been a hand. There still are a handful of owners like that. Art Modell, by the way, I never had a chance to cover him because he was out of the league by the time I started covering. But my colleagues who did loved Art Modell. I know he’s he’s a dirty word in Cleveland. I get that, but you’re in Baltimore
Nestor Aparicio 24:46
here, so he’s a hero here. Right, he’s
Ken Belson 24:48
a hero. And I said, well, why? He says, well, if you needed if you needed something, you just called Art’s house, and his wife would say, Art, the Times is on the phone, and he would come out and just pick up the phone. I mean, it wasn’t like a big nobody running interference for him. Al Davis was like that, you know. Al Davis at every meeting, the only guy left when you go to an owners meeting that still has a circus is Jerry Jones. Every other owner is strategically looking for a way, the shortest distance between the velvet rope and their limo, like, and then you know, no eye contact with reporters, preferably, and definitely a couple of people around you to to make a buffer. But Jerry, you can stop him. But he is he is one of very few owners. Clark Hunt will do it on occasion if he has something to say. But yeah, most of these guys are living in other other universes, and like I said, if if you covered, I don’t know, some other industry, I’m not sure it’d be a heck of a lot different. But sports does make people feel more valuable than maybe they are, as if they did it, and that’s that’s how important sports is in our culture.
Nestor Aparicio 25:59
So if nothing keeps Bashati up at night, and he pretty much said he’s checked out at the press conference in like all of his body languages, and and my sources tell me he hates the league. He hates the way the league is run, but he has no power over any. He’s just sort of that’s why he’s sort of checked out. He felt like he didn’t have any role, and he saw. He even said out loud the the reason you’re writing books about these guys and not him is he just didn’t feel like he wanted to invest the time with all of this basically shit. Quite frankly, just a lot of it that he didn’t feel like as a billionaire he wanted. He just wanted to go out and be on his boat, and good for him. But then you put Sashi Brown in front of it, and this is where my question would be for you. And I say this all the time. I when I met Sashi Brown four years ago. He basically told me he’s going to throw me out, and he said, “I will never. I won’t speak. I won’t have anything to say to you. And I’m like, “You’re running the team. Dick Cass had plenty to say. So did David Modell because they’re taking state money because, like, we’re a local organization, we’re a neighborhood team. That’s kind of that’s how you get your sponsors. Didn’t understand just on a on a different checkout level, Sashi Brown. And I’m thinking to myself, it’s late August. You and I do this. He’s waking up. What do they have? 550 million in the bank, and their bills are 340 million. They already know they’re 200 million profit before the season. He doesn’t care if he sells a ticket. If they sell a hot dog, the game gets rained on. If COVID comes and they play Wednesday morning, if like it’s unbelievable that the people in those roles, they everybody’s on the gravy train because the money’s already made, and I think that that is the weirdest part of not just being a journalist or a customer or a PSL holder or a business owner or a local like or any of that or a communicator or a decent person like any of that, when the road is paved like that, there’s a level of arrogance that goes into being Sashi Brown, that goes into Steve Bashati hiring a guy like that and saying, “Come on, we’re too we’re too big to fail. It doesn’t nothing matters. Nothing. That’s my. That’s the guy with the gun who protects us, and that’s the lawyer over there that protects the rest. And here’s my pocketbook. Do whatever you want. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.
Ken Belson 28:07
No, you’re right. I mean, the NFL is the only league that I know of where every team turns a profit by the time they show up on opening the walk-in, turn on the lights. The salary cap is covered. That’s their biggest expense. The media money now covers the salary cap plus, and then you sell the sponsorships and the PSLs and the tickets and the food and the suites and everything else, merchandise. And so now you’re really raking in money. Thank God for the Green Bay Packers because they’re publicly owned. We do have some insight into their annual earnings, which you can extrapolate. I believe they made $432 million last year in national revenue, which is TV plus the major sponsorships. Every team gets the same $432 million. How much is the salary cap this year? I lost track. 200 250,000,200, somewhere in there. So it’s
Nestor Aparicio 28:59
432 is the check that Sashi wakes up with every January one. He wakes up at $432 million, which is more than enough to run the whole operation. And then every ticket, every sponsor, every wingding, every everything is just juice, literally.
Ken Belson 29:14
Well, there there are costs to selling tickets, obviously. No, but those
8Nestor Aparicio 29:18
are all baked in. I mean, that’s I’m saying, like, I pay that guy 100 grand. I pay that girl 200 grand. Whatever we, they have all cost certainty and absolutely profit certainty that’s built in. That Ted Leon just owns a hockey team and a basketball team every day. They got to get up and pimp it. They do whether he admits it or not, and you know, and and the team’s going to go up in revenue, and I know the NBA thing’s way up. I’m in the baseball town where nobody’s making any money, and they’re about to walk out. But this NFL thing, the arrogance with which they breathe, which you wrote about here with money, and the arrogance with which they negotiate every deal, comes from the fact that they just. They’re just swimming in money, and yeah, they’re
Ken Belson 30:01
swimming in money, and they have the product, the television product that everybody needs. If you are any of the networks or major streamers, you can’t you can’t go out and sell to advertisers unless you have the NFL or some piece of the NFL, whether it’s Monday night, Sunday night, Thursday night, you need the packages, and so there’s you know this has been in the news recently about the NFL’s push to renegotiate their television deals early, and Fox said, you know what, we’ll roll the dice. We’re not going to open it up to negotiations. We’ll just wait till this thing expires in 2033, and there was, you know, there was some legitimate concern that well, Fox is really going to be in trouble. What if the NFL stiffs them? No, the NFL needs Fox too. They reach a demographic that they, you know, the NFL is red meat. They’d be stupid not to do that. So in a sense, they need each other. But the NFL ultimately has more leverage than the networks, and it’s the threat of well, I’ll give your games to CBS. They’ll be happily do the 4o’clock games also, you know. And at some point, they’ll make even more money. Yeah. So, but look, sports is live sports is pretty much all that’s left keeping people subscribing to cable TV. You know, why do you need cable TV? Local local news, maybe, and and live sports. What most of what I watch is baseball, my local baseball team, and you know how much more do I watch? Some, but I could survive on Netflix if I had to. So yeah, I think that’s where this is headed. I mean, it’s already here, frankly, and that’s why the owners can strut like peacocks around expensive hotel lobbies because they got the they got the best game in in town.
Nestor Aparicio 31:47
They were making a lot of money a couple years ago when you were plotting this book, and you know I I do the Maryland lottery and I have my Raven scratch offs and we do our crab cake tour. But two weeks ago I was in Ocean City and John Martin, who’s now the senior director, a senior advisor, excuse me, of the lottery, and Seth Elkin came on, and they gave me a little brochure. I have in the other room, but it’s since gambling’s gone on here. One of the reasons John was a part of this and is a part of my show every week is to talk about sports wagering. One 800 gambler, and we’re doing all that in September. I’m not a gambler, right? Like my dad worked at the point he would bring him a pool card on a Saturday for three bucks, 10 bucks. You try to circle for never an inducement to wager, and you little pool cards. And the the the the legal part of this, I see what the states take is. I see where everybody thought the casinos would be, you know, be 85% mobile. It’s more like 97% 98% mobile wagering. Now it happens in the middle of the night. It happens in games. You talk about live programming and gambling on it. Where’s the league’s juice in this? Because I know it’s just it’s trickling now because it’s just kind of been starting the last couple of years. But I gotta think, and I see the states pie. And look, the state’s money goes into schools, education, the the fund, all of that, and there’s a lot more money for the state of Maryland because Louis the bookmaker was getting that money before. You know, bang bang and all of that. Like, why you don’t want street gambling? So I’ll hear it, take it in state. I never understood how you could go to Wimbledon and bet it on the in the back. It never made any sense to me. Now it’s I’m like Barney Rubble and and Fred Bat Bat Bat Bat Bat Big Pop. He’s got the hose. How much is Bob Kraft making on this? I know he was in on the original betting thing and like all that. Bishody, the league. Where’s the money for that above and beyond my state and the lottery running it and us getting our vig in that, and DraftKings and the casinos getting their vig. How’s the league in on this, and how are they getting their their vig?
Ken Belson 33:48
Well, there there are only there are two primary ways. One is they sell lots of sponsorships: Caesars, the official casino of the league; Fnatics, the official sports book. Whatever they can slice that marketing category, just like the
Nestor Aparicio 34:01
military category, when they’re they’re getting flag money, right? Literally, right?
Ken Belson 34:05
Yeah, and also hard liquor. You know, it used to just be the hard liquor. No, now it’s the official gin, the official vodka, the official bourbon, the official Tennessee bourbon, the official Kentucky bourbon. So that’s the main one, and then of course the Ravens and every other team can do a local deal with an Indian casino, whatever they want, a sports book in the stadium like Washington does with is it Fanatics has it or was a green
Nestor Aparicio 34:33
turtle a million years ago but yeah it’s yeah it’s the only one and we talked about it because it’s in Maryland it’s in my state, but you gamble at the Commanders game. It’s going in Annapolis. I mean, feels like Washington, Washington, as we say here. But um, but yeah, that’s they they put the casino in the stadium, right? Literally.
8Ken Belson 34:51
Yeah. So that’s the first thing, and I guess secondary would be the bricks and mortar casino in on the concourse, and the and the the other main way that we. Makes its money is selling the data, selling the in-game data, which every sports book needs for real time, for to to basically have a sports book. People want to see what the odds are, and of course, people are now betting on every single play. So you need instantaneous data. You don’t need stuff that buffers in five minutes late. You need it right then, and so you can sell data in a number of ways, and you can tier it based on how fast you want that data. Does your fantasy football league need the most, the fastest data? Probably not. You’re not changing players. You set your line up. You watch it. The scores buffers and takes a minute to update. All right, fine. You’ll live with it, but if you do have a sports book that relies on it, then you’re going to buy the faster feed, and that’ll cost you more money. So I think those are the two primary ways. There’s been talk of integrity taxes and all sorts of other things, but right now the league doesn’t make any money on the take, on the total take. Now you did mention Robert Kraft and and Cherry Jones. They were early investors in DraftKings, which went public, and so they were. And I say early, like you know, five $10 million at the beginning stage. So they knew where this was all headed. There’s a great scene in the book, 2016. They go to Vegas late in the year, October, somewhere in there, and they’re meeting Steve Sisolak, who was the county commissioner at the time in Clark County, and a bunch of executives, casino people, and so they’re wondering. You know, now remember, the Raiders didn’t move until March the following year, or didn’t they didn’t vote on the on the Raiders leaving Oakland until March, so this was months before that, and it is more than a year, maybe a year and a half before the Supreme Court allowed sports gambling outside of Nevada. Okay, so they find a town. Roger Goodell’s there too, and Steve Sisolak told me he said it was amazing during lunch they never asked about gambling. Now for years they had been telling the public we can’t do business with Vegas because the proximity to gambling and sports books, this is a disaster for us. Integrity, integrity. They never asked about. All they wanted to know is, can you pay for the stadium and can you fill it and make sure Mark Davis or whichever owner in this case, you know, gets a good deal. And they they had already moved on. They knew sports gambling was going to get legalized everywhere, and they invested in it. So these guys, they they knew where it was headed. Even though Roger Goodell was out there saying we can’t do business with Vegas, they they were ready to do business with Vegas, and they were ready to do it anywhere. Frankly, that would pony up, and Vegas really did. They Mark Davis essentially got a free stadium to move from Oakland. He got the
Nestor Aparicio 37:47
greatest deal ever. Like he went from the worst in the league to top five in the league forever because it’s Vegas. And I think that that’s the amazing thing. Is I’m thinking like even the dumbest guy in the room is becoming a bit like literally, so I will leave you with this. By the way, Ken Belson’s here. The book is Every Day Sunday. I highly recommend it. You learn so. It just it’s a great book, and you just you do wonderful work. And I I I want to read a little. Well, you know what? I’ll leave this to the end because this my question to you is about Sashi Brown and about the presidents of the team because the owners on the what’s on here what is he what worries the president of the Kansas City Chiefs or the like what keeps them up at night if they have a stadium and it’s mostly full and their football team might win and they have some players do they really have anything that worries them other than a bomb going off like literally,
Ken Belson 38:41
yeah, they do, and I think again, let’s circle back to my first point about becoming media companies. You mentioned the Kansas City Chiefs; they have literally launched their own studio to come out with content. So the league, of course, has NFL Network, and and you know they deal with hard knocks and all this other programming, but the teams are now in the same business on a more localized level for the hardcore Chiefs fans. If Ard Knox is going to circle through Andy Reid’s locker room once every six years, I don’t pick pick it. What I don’t know what the number is, but why is why aren’t the Chiefs making the most of Patrick Mahomes and cranking out their own video content that that frankly they can put up on YouTube or sell as a packaged programming. So they’re doing it. That’s a space that is potentially lucrative. It’s a hard. It’s they’re new to it, but it’s something they’re doing. The second, but to your point,
Nestor Aparicio 39:35
every day then becomes. I mean, the social media. It’s. I’ve had a radio station for 35 years. I have to put programming on 24 hours a day, right? To your point, they pay 11 minutes of football every other week for 1618, weeks a year. Like so, that is they-they are-they’re a television show that that never stops, right? Yeah, like Mike TV, title
Ken Belson 39:54
of the book, right? And and and the second thing is the stadiums themselves. You talked about selling. Every ticket, sure, but the stadiums now are anchors for development around it. So if you’re Arthur Blank, his stadium across the street now is this enormous $5 billion development. They’ve got kozum, they’ve got dining opportunities. They’ll have a sports book. There’s a hotel, and there’s apartments going up, and all sorts of other things. And on the other side is the Atlanta Hawks Arena. Now Arthur isn’t the primary developer, but he put in some money, 200 million. I heard. Why would he want that in his front door? Why wouldn’t he just want to own it as a parking lot? Well, because he’s going to make a nice share, a nice chunk of money on every other non-game day, which Falcons only play eight, nine home games, and he doesn’t have to share any of that money with any of the other owners. It’s not league revenue, so the the concept of a of a stadium now has broadened into a real estate deal, and that’s one of the one of the several reasons why private equity is jumping in because they don’t just see merchandise; they see the NFL brand being used to market something else-a billion dollar, in this case, $5 billion development. One of the biggest, certainly in the southeast and in Atlanta, which is already a big city. So they see other money they don’t have to share with the owners. And again, it’s the marketing of the NFL brand. Jerry Jones did it down in Frisco, Texas. The Star is a big development around his training facility and headquarters. Most extraordinary
Nestor Aparicio 41:31
thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s ridiculous. But it’s it’s extraordinary.
Ken Belson 41:34
Yeah, and I don’t, you know, it sounds like your owner there in Baltimore is probably not going to be one of these guys, but maybe the next guy will be, and you know, it’s it it’s the way of the world. All the all the leagues are trying to do it. I think football does it better than anybody, or bigger than anybody for sure.
8Nestor Aparicio 41:52
I don’t want to read too much from your book, but I’m on page 210 here, and it’s the Jerry Richardson, Jerry, the other Jara, who made his name in Baltimore was a cult,
Ken Belson 42:02
yes,
Nestor Aparicio 42:03
and obviously was harassing women in the office and foot massage, like all the old man nonsense that we’re familiar with with the orange guy running the country. And he died, and only three of the people that were in the league showed up at his funeral at Wofford. And you said by the time the memorial, Richardson had been out of the NFL for five years. He was an uncomfortable footnote to the same owners he had worked hard to help. And the previous five pages talked about his life in the league and Denny’s and getting the team to Charlotte, which cost us the team, which we had to steal the team. So all of that. Only three of them traveled to Wofford College for his funeral. In all of his glory and grandeur and his billionaires, he didn’t have any bunkies. It was a reminder that most owners owe their fame to the reflected glory of the NFL. David Rubenstein and the Orioles. I buy the Orioles. I get to own Big Pal. Once they sell their teams, they become just another billionaire.
Ken Belson 43:01
Yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 43:01
I circle that one, and I think that that’s why Steve Bashati doesn’t leave. Right, that’s why David Rubenstein wanted in. That’s why Angelo’s died with it. That that’s why his kid fought to keep it because there is something about being in the club that only you’re in the club, and there’s something that feels good about that, right to the day you die, even if it doesn’t feel good after you die.
Ken Belson 43:24
Yeah, and I, you know, there are tax reasons why Steve Bashadi might be hanging around longer than he might be otherwise. You know, maybe he wants to set it up for his kids. He always thought he’s
Nestor Aparicio 43:35
going to give all his money away just by the buy.
8Ken Belson 43:37
Yeah, and and good for him. You know, so there may be other reasons we don’t know about, but yeah, you get addicted to being in the spotlight, and owners who have quote lost their game are still around, and some of them just don’t know what else to do. I mean, no offense to Mike Brown, he gets picked on a lot, but like he just lives for football, and he’s not interested in marketing the Bengals in the modern way of all the other owners, he goes along with it. Yeah, we
Nestor Aparicio 44:04
make plenty of money. I live a good life, right? I mean, that’s kind of I’ve met Mike many times. Yeah, like that’s kind of the way he looks at it, but that’s not the way.
Ken Belson 44:12
No,
Nestor Aparicio 44:13
David Rubenstein, who puts $2 billion, looks at his business. Baseball’s a whole thing, but these football guys feel real comfortable to me. You know, just it just feels very like, and it doesn’t feel like it’s going to end, which is why you write books about it, right? Like, there’s no end to this anytime. If a guy drops dead in week three in the middle, doesn’t stop the game, they’ll play week four.
Ken Belson 44:31
Yeah, they will. I mean, Damar Hamlin, you said it at the beginning. Tamar Hamlin was as close as they came to the nightmare scenario, and thank God he he survived, but I mean that is probably one of their worst fears as a player dying on national television. But I remember
Nestor Aparicio 44:49
Stingley when I was 10 years old, right? And here we are. I have my Patriot belt buckle up here. Ken Belson’s one of the great writers in America at the New York Times. His book is Every Day is Sunday. How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell turned the NFL into a cultural and economic juggernaut. And if you followed my career at any point, know why they’ve thrown me out. You know why I love having guys like Belson on the program and people like you still writing books. Keep keep up the great work. And thank you, Nestor. And if I can ever help you here in Baltimore, jump at me. And I I got my highlighter out on the book. I’m only on 209. When I have you back on? I’ll have some in the three hundreds. I am Nestor. We are WNSTAM 1570 Towson, Baltimore. Don’t get the wrong idea. We’re still watching the game this week. It’s Baltimore positive. Stay with us.
