“The media landscape is changing quickly, and it’s not because we’re changing it, it’s because that’s where the consumers are going,” Goodell tells m
“The media landscape is changing quickly, and it’s not because we’re changing it, it’s because that’s where the consumers are going,” Goodell tells me when we meet at his palatial NFL office the day before Murdoch’s party. “People think we’re leading it. We’re actually going where the consumers are. And I think that’s a fundamental thing that you have to spend a lot of time learning and trying to understand.”
It is perhaps Murdoch, if anyone, whom Goodell vaunts as the model titan, as Goodell pushes for a deal that will cement his own legacy. Murdoch “is a true visionary,” Goodell says, “on the way he builds everything. But what always struck me about him is he looked at things longer term.”
Over the past few months, the Murdoch empire has been a thorn in Goodell’s side, as the Department of Justice has announced an investigation into how steep and arduous it has become for NFL fans to watch games. The Wall Street Journal, Fox, and the New York Post have steadily aired accusations of anticompetitive, anti-consumer tactics. The accusations have irked the NFL, and Goodell.
“Well, I don’t agree with that because 88 percent of our games, roughly, are on broadcast television,” Goodell tells me, pushing back. “The other 12 percent are on platforms that are incredibly widely distributed and people are already there. Netflix is not a small distribution. In fact, you can make an argument it’s bigger than some of the networks.”
Goodell has been politically savvy from the cradle. His father, Charles, was a US senator, appointed by New York governor Nelson Rockefeller to Robert F. Kennedy’s seat after his assassination. Charles, the descendant of a prominent New York abolitionist, was among the loudest Republican voices against the Vietnam War. Roger, one of five children, joined the NFL in 1982, working under Commissioner Pete Rozelle. After a brief stint with the New York Jets, he returned to the league office, becoming commissioner in 2006.
“As a businessman, he’s direct, he’s aggressive,” says Versant CEO Mark Lazarus, who negotiated deals with Goodell when Lazarus was running NBC Sports. “He’s well prepared for any discussion. There aren’t many, if any, things in discussions that we’ve had that have ever, that he didn’t have a—I may not have liked his answers—but that he didn’t have an answer or a counterpoint to.”
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