Posted on 09/23/2017 8:55:42 PM PDT by TaxPayer2000
In case you wondered whether the National Football League would again find itself at the center of political controversy this season, wonder no more: the answer is yes.
On Friday night at a rally in Alabama, President Trump called NFL players who kneel or sit during the national anthem “sons of bitches,” and said that teams should fire them.
Trump appealed directly to NFL owners by asking the crowd: “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!'” And he directly encouraged fans to walk out of games when a player protests during the anthem: “If you see it, even if it’s one player, leave the stadium, I guarantee things will stop.”
The first team owners to respond were John Mara and Steve Tisch of the New York Giants: in a statement on Saturday, they called Trump’s comments “inappropriate, offensive and divisive.” More owners have followed. At the league level, the NFL released a statement in which Commissioner Roger Goodell called the comments “divisive” and said they “demonstrate a lack of respect for the NFL, our great game and all of our players.”
But what matters next, for the business of the NFL, is how NFL sponsors react.
Trump discussing the NFL, and player protests, in Huntsville, Alabama, on Sept. 22, 2017.
The NFL is estimated to bring in an all-time-high $14 billion in revenue this year, and more than $1.5 billion of that comes from fees that official league sponsors pay to be associated with football at the highest relationship level.
When there is an NFL scandal — whether it’s a horrifying report about 110 out of 111 deceased players’ brains testing positive for CTE; or a domestic violence case ruling not going the league’s way; or a growing number of players protesting the anthem, potentially offending many fans — all that matters to the business of the league is whether sponsors walk away. And they never walk away. (Even when TV ratings dip, it is for the most part a financial risk to the cable networks that show games, not to the league unless ratings get so bad that advertisers flee.)
Who are the “official sponsors” of the NFL at the league level? Big brands including Anheuser-Busch InBev, Barclays, Bose, Bridgestone, Campbell’s, FedEx, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Nationwide, Nike, PepsiCo, Ticketmaster, Under Armour, and Visa.
Will these brands take a side in this latest battle of words: President Trump vs the NFL?
Chris Lucas and Preston Brust of the band LOCASH performed at a Pepsi NFL Kickoff event on Sept. 9, 2017 in Leesburg, Virginia. (Getty Images for Pepsi)
Some brands may say something, but don’t expect them to say very much. And don’t expect any to shrink in any way from their relationship with the league.
That’s because, in the words of Wasserman managing partner Elizabeth Lindsey, who works with brands like these on their NFL sponsorships, “Football is football… a phenomenon, a juggernaut… It’ll always continue to garner attention from the marketers, primarily because it garners that much attention from the fans.”
(NFL sponsors, and how they react to NFL scandals, was the topic of Episode 2 of our Yahoo Finance Sportsbook podcast on the business of football, with Lindsey as our special guest. You can listen on iTunes or scroll down to the bottom of this post.)
For past examples, look at how league sponsors responded when the NFL was under fire in 2014 for its handling of the domestic violence case against running back Ray Rice. Many issued statements expressing outrage, but none did more than a delicate PR move.
AB InBev said it was, “disappointed and increasingly concerned by the recent incidents that have overshadowed this NFL season” and was, “not yet satisfied with the league’s handling of behaviors that so clearly go against our own company culture and moral code.” PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi said she was, “deeply disturbed” by “the repugnant behavior of a few players and the NFL’s acknowledged mishandling of these issues.”
Three years later, AB InBev and Pepsi are still proud league sponsors.
For a more current example, look at Under Armour, which has already put out a tweet on Trump’s comments about the player protests. (And Under Armour has dealt with Trump-related PR problems all year.)
That tweet perfectly hedges, attempting to please both the people offended by player protests and the people offended by Trump’s criticisms of the player protests. The company “stands by the flag and by our athletes.” The statement appears to take a strong stand, while actually saying nothing.
In the days to come, as news outlets dissect the fallout, and pro athletes send out tweets, look for NFL sponsors to either do nothing or issue a careful, walking-on-eggshells statement.
But as political issues continued to bleed into sports in 2017 (and into all industries, all corners of American business), soon sponsors may be forced to do more than put out a cautious statement.
Exactly. These millionaire blacks are feeling guilty so they pretend to be down with the struggle hoping it erases their guilt and hoping that the poor blacks are too caught up in hatred to notice these athletes are making millions in salary.
Nuthur Felon Louse ...NFL
Lol! As they say in the original BG: by your command!
I have a feeling, that you are correct. The NHL is getting ready to kick off. I hope the NHL does not bow to political correctness.
It is not Trump vs the NFL. It's Trump vs the kneeled protesters.
They will simply stop playing the anthem before games.
That bag of shit Kapernick is going to go down in history as the man who wrecked the tradition.
If you decide to watch it, I hope your memory of the series is extensive, because SyFy is cutting out chunks of the show for extra commercials. If I wasn’t so lazy, I’d dig out my Blu-rays of the series. But, hey...
“The solution is to stop playing the anthem before games.”
Or do what one high school did and play the anthem while the players are still in the locker room.
At the very least, the NFL should find their own flag bearers and stop depending on the police and military - putting them and the flag out there to be disrespected.
The protests are about police brutality. A little perspective. Statistically anyone, Black or White is more likely to get involved in serious accidents going to and from the football stadiums than being victims of police brutality. For an exercise in terror, drive around Met Life stadium when the Giants or Jets are in town, same with Raymond James in Tampa.
That would be the quickest way to encourage the NFL to get a handle on the posturing little boys. If Frito Lay, Pepsi, Budweiser etc saw a sales retraction and heard feedback as to why, the message would go out.
I follow the SEC...hopefully that will never occur.
Well its a good thing Clinton isnt still president, you would have to commit suicide by burning your own compound down.
We need more half-filled stadiums. A LOT more.
I guess it's a good thing I stopped watching the NFL about two player strikes ago.
Professional sports already holds very nearly zero interest to me anyway, and this crap will likely drop it the rest of the way.
LMAO!
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