The National Football League (NFL) is the United States" most popular sport, eclipsing Major League Baseball (MLB) over a decade ago. This success has created an extraordinary market in which to sell products and generate huge revenues for the NFL teams and for the league itself. This success has also created controversy between several team owners and the league commissioner over the legal rights that each claim to have their respective team trademarked name and logo. While the NFL apparently continues to offer the most popular consumer sports product, the league continues to face ongoing marketing challenges in four different areas; Broadcast media, licensing and sponsorship, consumer diversity and youth participation. .
Broadcast Media.
The NFL relies on several different types of broadcast media to get their product to the target audience. Traditionally, Television broadcast has been the means by which most Americans have been able to view football games. Multibillion dollar contracts with ABC/ESPN, CBS and now FOX have created competition between the rival networks each bringing new platforms and announcers in to make the overall presentation of the football game more appealing and entertaining. This strategy has worked for the NFL so far, providing approximately $70 million annually per team. In the future, television needs to continue to play a dominant role in displaying the NFL product and the league should continue to get larger and larger contracts to maximize the revenue generated by the sixteen weeks of regular season play, but a host of other support broadcast media needs to accompany the television broadcast. As live feed streaming technology continues to be produced on the Internet, a new way to experience the NFL is developing. There should be billion dollar contracts waiting for online providers that can create a new NFL experience using that technology.