College students often live far from where they grew up, meaning they can’t usually watch their hometown NFL team play on Sunday afternoons. DirecTV and its new parent AT&T are hoping to reach these young football fans by offering a discounted rate for online access to NFL Sunday Ticket. [More]
football
The Going Rate For A 30-Second Super Bowl Commercial Spot Tops $5M
By 8.6.15
Even though last year’s slate of Super Bowl ads was largely regarded as ho-hum, and even though advertisers are increasingly subverting the “surprise!” effect of Super Bowl sunday commercials by relentlessly teasing their big-ticket spots online days in advance, the NFL’s big game is still TV’s biggest annual draw, and so the cost to be a part of it is going up again. [More]
Federal Court Cancels Registration Of Redskins Trademarks
By 7.8.15
A year after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office deemed the term “Redskin” offensive, and therefore not eligible for a trademark, the Washington NFL team has been dealt another blow in its attempt to protect its brand. This morning, a federal court agreed with the USPTO and ordered the agency to cancel the team’s trademark. [More]
Hyundai Replaces General Motors As Official Automotive Sponsor Of The NFL
By 6.29.15
Sure, sometimes breaking up might be hard to do, but it always helps when you’ve got another suitor lined up to take your former flame’s place. Such is the arrangement for the National Football League, which announced today that it’s ending its relationship with General Motors and hooking up with Hyundai. [More]
After Decades Of Raking In Mountains Of Money, NFL Finally Decides To Abandon Not-For-Profit Status
By 4.28.15
SEC Alleges Ex-NFL Player Ran $31M Ponzi Scheme
By 4.7.15
In football, a cornerback is tasked with defending against pass offenses. It appears one former NFL player wasn’t doing much defending on behalf of investors off the field. Instead, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleges former New York Giants player Will Allen used his big league connections to assist in the operation of a $31 million Ponzi scheme based on making loans to cash-strapped pro athletes. [More]
Ticket Broker Can’t Deliver Customer’s $4K Super Bowl Tix… Until Local News Gets Involved
By 2.4.15
Here’s the thing about buying Super Bowl tickets: You can get them for a relatively decent price — even through a broker — if you buy them early enough, before anyone knows which teams will even be making the playoffs, let alone playing in the big game. But you stand the chance of those tickets mysteriously vanishing when a ticket broker realizes he can get a lot more for them from last-minute buyers. [More]
Google & NFL Strike Deal To Bring NFL Content To YouTube
By 1.26.15
Just in time for the Super Bowl this weekend, the National Football League has decided to play nice and share with others, announcing a partnership with Google this week that will bring game highlights to a YouTube channel and search results. [More]
Some NFL Fans Will Have To Wake Up At 6:30 A.M. To Watch Games Next Season
By 1.22.15
One reason I could never live on the West Coast — aside from the warrants out for my arrest in every county from Multnomah to Imperial — is that I’d have to wake up before noon on a Sunday to watch football. But today the NFL decided that the entire continental U.S. must wake up early to catch games — or at least the three bouts taking place in London in 2015. [More]
NBC To Stream Super Bowl To Convince People To Buy Cable
By 1.20.15
Rather than requiring that online viewers prove they have cable TV subscriptions in order to watch its live stream of the Super Bowl, NBC has decided that giving un-cabled Americans online access to the year’s biggest non-curling single-night sporting event is the perfect opportunity to convince people to ante-up for pay-TV. [More]
CBS To Continue With Thursday Night Football Next Season
By 1.19.15
Even though the current NFL season has yet to reach its peak in the annual “I Watch It for the Commercials Bowl,” the professional sponsorship league that also involves football has already announced some plans for next season, like the fact that CBS will continue to prop up the NFL Network by airing a bunch of primetime weeknight games again. [More]
Ashley Furniture Franchisee To Hand Out $1.5M In Refunds After Ohio State Win
By 1.13.15
Ohio State surprised a lot of people last night by blowing out the University of Oregon 42-20 in the NCAA football championship game, but while many people in the Buckeye State were overjoyed by the resounding win, one furniture company was probably hoping that the game would have been closer. [More]
Colin Kaepernick Fined $10K For Wearing The Wrong Headphones
By 10.10.14
As we mentioned earlier this week, the NFL has banned players from wearing any non-Bose headphones on the field, in the locker room or while talking to the press after the game. Which is why San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick is being hit with a $10,000 fine for sporting a pair of the Beats headphones (that he gets paid a lot more than ten grand to endorse). [More]
Beats Headphones Join iPads On List Of Products Banned From NFL Sidelines
By 10.6.14
While NFL stars like Colin Kaepernick might love the Beats by Dre headphones they get paid to wear, they won’t be allowed to sport the fashionable headgear on the sidelines of their games, or even around their necks during post-game interviews, thanks to an exclusivity deal reached between the league and Bose. [More]
NFL Sunday Ticket To Remain A DirecTV Exclusive
By 10.2.14
Millions of football fans now have a reason to not ditch DirecTV. After months of negotiations, the satellite service has finally renewed its deal to be the exclusive carrier for NFL Sunday Ticket. [More]
FCC Repeals Sports Blackout Rule, But Blackouts Will Continue
By 9.30.14
Calling the NFL on its bluff to move its broadcast games to cable, the FCC voted unanimously this morning to repeal the outdated sports blackout rule that prevented the airing of certain games that weren’t sold out. Though it doesn’t mean the end of blackouts. [More]
Baltimore Ravens Exchange 5,595 Ray Rice Jerseys, Run Out Of Replacements
By 9.22.14
To say that the Ray Rice jersey exchange held by the Baltimore Ravens this weekend was popular with fans is perhaps an understatement. After all, with a line half a mile long to turn in Rice jerseys in exchange for jerseys bearing the names of other Ravens players, it’s no surprise that the team ran out of replacement jerseys at around 5,595 exchanges. [More]
Dallas Bar Owner Won’t Show NFL Games In Protest Of League’s Domestic Violence Policy
By 9.17.14
Like a unicorn kissing noses with a flying dragon, a bar in Texas that refuses to show football was, until this point, a fantastical thing that we never thought could become reality. But one Dallas bar owner is willing to risk out on all that football money to protest the NFL’s stance on domestic violence. He says he won’t show any NFL games this season until something changes in the league. [More]
