How the NFL's MD of International sees the world

0:03Hello and welcome to another episode of Worth Knowing, the Sports Business Podcast, the Sports cushion and david how are you do you know what thank you so much for asking how are you really i'm really well thanks really really well how are you yeah same question very good thanks uh the countdown to christmas which is actually a holiday that i celebrate uh how about you uh yeah likewise but also a time of year when a lot of the industry don't get a break famously because there's lots of sport happening over the festive period a lot of them don't and a lot of them do yeah also also So true. Swings around about.

0:55We've got an event coming up in Australia, David, as you know. This is really information for the listeners. And I was astounded to learn that Australia, yeah, they take December and January off. That's internal information that must have been sort of interpreted from co-pilot or something like that. Perhaps so. 4th, 5th Feb in Brisbane, the Olympic city, future Olympic city of Brisbane. Brisbane in my life at the moment. I hear you might be heading down. Oh, yes. Big time. Yeah. Which is why you've started talking about it. Yeah. Switched on to the fact that it's happening. And yeah, I'm intending to go.

1:36I'm going to go to the Australian Open before. It's literally a few days after the Australian Open. Isn't that handy timing? Which now is the AO. You know, they've done a complete digital first refurb, the AO. Apologies to anyone who's taken a first. Apologies to all the people I'll meet in Melbourne and Brisbane. Anyway, I'll be there. I'll finalise and formalise my plans and try and gather some troops to speak to in Melbourne and then bring with me to Brisbane for our Leaders Meet Australia event. And if you'd like to know more, drop James a line. I think that's the... Drop me a text. That's the instruction.

2:18David, who's on the show today? On the podcast today, I've been chatting to Gerrit Meyer, the Managing Director, Head of NFL International, who I spoke to a few days ago from NFL HQ. He's going to be in Australia next year. He is. The NFL are heading out to Melbourne to play a game at the MCG next season. One of a growing number of international games that they are playing. They played seven this year, James, this season. Just concluded the international series. Berlin, Sao Paulo, three games in London, a debut in Madrid, a debut in Dublin as well. And as we heard from Roger Goodell when he was on stage with us and at Leaders Week London, 16 is the magic number for the NFL in terms of the ambition, the vision to increase the number of games per season played outside of the US.

3:20But Gerrit's role, as he will explain, goes beyond the staging of the games and covers all aspects of the NFL's international push. And that is everything from the commercial operations to working with the clubs, the teams on their own international aspirations. And they've got the international markets program, but also spreading the gospel, spreading the word of the NFL and developing fan bases and links to power brokers, to governments around the world as well. So it's a really good conversation and I think good to get a perspective on how the NFL thinks internationally from the US HQ, the office, rather than the outposts in London, for example.

4:12He's an impressive chap, Gerrit Mayer. I remember him from a previous life of his. He spent many years at Red Bull, was running Red Bull Media House for a little while. Is he Austrian? Yes, I believe so. Yeah. Right. Yes. Yes, he has actually got a varied career, not necessarily in sort of central sports rights holder organizations. I'm sure you dig into a bit of that in the conversation. But yes, one to look forward to. And we've covered Australia, obviously, by accident. What else is going on? Netflix, massive, massive deal, huh? Yeah. I mean, if it happens, there's - What's the number? I haven't got the number in front of me, but it's a big number.

5:00I was, so theory, I'm sure you've seen this theory. So Netflix has agreed a deal for something like 80 billion, isn't it? To buy Warner Brothers, to buy Warner Brothers streaming service and archive. And the theory during the rounds is that that deal won't happen. there are lots of regulatory hurdles that that has to pass. And it is sort of 4D chess from David Zaslav, Discovery Warner Brothers, Warner Brothers Discovery fame, who's basically waiting. It's like a move against Netflix to sort of wear them down in a process or something. Is that right? That's one of several theories during the rounds.

5:50You've also got Skydance, Paramount, who were in for Netflix, in for Warner Brothers Discovery, these various assets, the movie studio business, HBO, etc., who have made a sort of hostile takeover bit of their own to try and, I guess, gazump Netflix. And this is high-level media stuff. And as you say, I think years away from reaching any sort of visible conclusion, there's lots of regulatory issues to be navigated in the US, but then internationally as well, certainly the EU and ultimately in the UK. and also probably in the US, somewhat dependent on Donald Trump's mood the day that he is asked to take a decision on this.

6:42So you've got these sort of media heavyweights, Ted Sarandos, Zaslav, as you mentioned, David Zaslav, David Ellison now, who has emerged really over the last year or so as one of the figures in certainly US media, but I think global media. and yeah, you get the feeling there's a lot more to this than meets the eye. You know the trend for sports documentaries? I think we're maybe, you know, we're definitely over the peak, but perhaps we're reaching the long tail now. I wonder whether media documentaries, big media documentaries. The real succession. The real succession. Let's do a Netflix documentary about Netflix.

7:28Well, it's going to be disappointing if this deal is completed in whichever way it is completed and we find out that cameras weren't in all the rooms charting this, chronicling it for, you know, for packaging, for future packaging. I suspect that hasn't happened though. Although it's the kind of thing you can definitely imagine, I mean, if he hasn't done it already, but other big players in the sort of entertainment business scene, Ari Emanuel, there must be a fly on the wall documentary series somewhere in his sights, how he does what he does, following him around in the car with him, at the table when the deals are done.

8:10So none of them would allow it probably in this deal. But yeah, we await to see what will happen there. I do think from a sports industry perspective, and there's an interesting bit, the sports bit of this, which is a tiny bit. tnt sports in the u.s is part of the uh the spun-off element of wbd that isn't part of this deal but tnt sports international is is yeah so there's an interesting uh element to this deal but i do think it is also worth reinforcing for anybody who works in the sports industry and a lot of people who may be writing think pieces about what this means for sport in the uk and in the US because ultimately it will probably mean something in the future.

9:03But it is worth reinforcing that there is not one person who is involved intimately in doing this deal who is for one second thinking about sport. This is much higher, much bigger, much more macro. And there will be ripple effects, but I think we're some time away from seeing what those exactly will be. Indeed. Anything else you would like to cover before we dig into Gerrit? Well, we've had a World Cup draw, James. Of course we have. Last Friday. You and I didn't see it live. We didn't catch this one live because we were enjoying a civilized corporate colleagues dinner for the festive period. Did you catch up with any of them?

9:39Caught upon the highlights. So Donald Trump won a peace prize, famously. Gianni Infantino hosting in a sort of holiday camp compare style, which I enjoyed. But then it's Gianni. Yeah, the draw's been made. It turns out there's absolutely loads of games and loads of kickoff times that will either be civilized or not, depending on which part of the world you are in. South Africa versus Mexico, opening game of the tournament in the Azteca in Mexico City. A repeat of the first game of the 2010 World Cup. And just in the last day or so, FIFA have snuck out these hydration breaks, which is three minute breaks in each half in every game, regardless of venue, regardless of climate, which is, you know, under the banner, obviously, of player welfare and player health, but absolutely opens up the opportunity for, well, effectively splits the game into quarters.

10:44So allows for neat commercial breaks 22 minutes into each half. I wonder how something like that works, given that FIFA will have already signed the majority of its broadcast contracts. Well, I can't imagine a situation where they haven't consulted with certainly Fox, who are broadcasting the World Cup in the US, a media market that absolutely thrives on more and more commercials. And you only have to look at the Super Bowl or any NFL game for evidence of that. And I don't think it would be a surprise at all to see Fox utilize that break in play to sell more inventory. And that can only be advantageous.

11:27Perhaps it won't be every single game, but you can imagine certainly for the big games, the knockout games, the US games, that's something they will be keen to do. I wonder whether if you are an ITV in the UK, commercial broadcaster, of course, longstanding broadcaster of football, being quite happy to broadcast 45 minute halves without commercials forever. whether you think about taking advantage of this sort of you know for enforced break in play to chuck in an advert or two or whether you are wary of the inevitable backlash that there will be from viewers who are simply not used to that and i think the interesting test case is that itv are broadcasting the six nations with picture in picture ads i think you're at pre-scrum so again Again, there's a lull, at least in play, and that could be the model that we see.

12:22But there's going to be some backlash to that. That will definitely be the model. And it's always, of course, more challenging for ITV because they share the broadcast rights, obviously, with the BBC, commercial-free broadcaster, of course. And so it will be a very jarring distinction if they do do that. But you can certainly see a scenario where that might happen. it's going to be an interesting world cup all around isn't it lots of travel for the teams it did so looking at these sort of matchups and where people are playing it really did hammer home again in a way that i don't think was necessarily immediately obvious in russia the the last previous biggest world cup or even brazil where there were quite long distances yeah long distances but but i guess it's because in the western world you know all these american cities people slash I have a better idea of where they are and the travel involved is phenomenal.

13:20Well, it feels like there's a huge difference in weather and climate as well that teams are going to be contending with depending on which city they are in. So it's a logistically complex tournament, but hey, it's happening and it's coming around quick now. So what we're going to see is now everybody knows where they're playing. You've got these six places for teams who still have to qualify through various playoff systems around the world. But I think by March, we will know the full makeup of the 48 teams. And of course, there's a big scrabble as well now for to confirm training bases, training locations, which brings in another bunch of cities, perhaps who tried to get games but didn't get games and there was a big long list of those but obviously 48 team camps is not insignificant as well so yeah it's all going to start to ramp up and as we've talked about before on the podcast I do think the challenge for any other sport for any other event next year is is just getting a bit of the oxygen getting a bit of the airtime as the World Cup sucks a lot of oxygen out of the sort of industry system.

14:37You know, we're only a matter of weeks away from a Winter Olympics and we've barely talked about it. But I'm not sure that we necessarily talk about the Winter Olympics a great deal. Speak for yourself. Yeah. Speak for yourself. Indeed. Indeed. Right. Shall we go to Gerrit? Let's hear from Gerrit Meyer, Managing Director and Head of NFL International. Gerrit Meyer is Managing Director, Head of NFL International, and he is on the line now, I presume, Gerrit, from NFL HQ in the heart of New York City. Yes, you're correct. I'm dialing in from New York, where the headquarters for the NFL is. Very good.

15:21Good to have you on. Thank you very much for doing this. We're talking just a few days really after Thanksgiving weekend. You are based out in the States. Give us a little insight into Thanksgiving weekend in the Maya household. Well, Thanksgiving has really become one of our favorite, favorite American holidays. There's a lot of good things that come together. It's family, it's good food, it's good drink, and it's a lot of good American football. Now, for us, two of our three sons have moved away and currently live in London. So unfortunately this year, we did not have the opportunity to get everybody together since they're deep in studies.

16:02And so we had to kind of keep it on a smaller flame with our youngest, my wife and I, and our dark Lola. But we had all the traditional trimmings of turkey and stuffings and again, American football. Yeah, I was going to ask what you watched, but I think I can probably guess the answer. Yes, it's part of the tradition that you see great football on Thanksgiving. And what I really appreciate is that we've started embracing more and more the kind of entertainment element of those Thanksgiving games, very much like we now work around our Christmas games. People are already familiar with how Super Bowl kind of comes with all the bells and with all the halftime shows.

16:46And I think it's great to see how these games now translate on a level that goes way beyond sports these days and entertain for even the casual fans on a Thanksgiving day. Give us your broad assessment to kick off, because it is very much your world, how the NFL is doing internationally at the moment, just off the back of the latest, what was it, seven game international series this season? Yes, we're still very early on. We are very happy how this season has gone with, as you said, seven games, a significant increase in regular season games. Again, as a reminder, all our games are regular season games.

17:28We don't do exhibition games. So they come in the middle of the season. So the operational lift, the tactical lift of everything that comes with executing those games. But for us, where we are internationally, the games are just a piece of it. They're catalysts of sorts in our broader strategy to grow the game of football, the game that we love so much internationally. And the games are the most visible ones in all the countries that we go into. We go into every year. We're now going into more and more new countries while staying in those that we go in for the first time. They're the ones that a lot of people talk about.

18:07And that's what people see. That's what you what resonates in the media. But they're just an element. The real work starts after the game, when we are taking that momentum that we have in market to ensure that season long, year round, we have the opportunity to activate and bring the game closer to boys, girls, women, men, to families who see relevance in the game for themselves. and that's a lot of work. That's a long-term element that we're embracing with pace but also with a lot of patience and so seeing how we've grown this year versus last year is very encouraging for us. Obviously, you've got, as you allude to there, venues that you have been to for many years, London being the obvious example of that and three more games there this season.

19:01Germany reasonably well established as well now and you've been in various cities and it was Berlin this year let's talk about those in a moment but let's maybe touch on a couple of the others the other set piece moments tell us about the the experience back in Sao Paulo in Brazil for example because I guess the the fascinating bit of this is that each of these events really taps into a local culture, a local vibe, the local fan culture, I suppose. And it certainly seemed from the pictures. And obviously, it was also the game that was broadcast globally on YouTube as well. So another first for the league.

19:46Tell us about the Brazilian experience. You're very right. On one hand, we're bringing a big piece of Americana to every country. That's what people expect. It's the American game. It's American football that's been called. everywhere outside of the United States. But at the same time, it's very important that we recognize the cultural differences in the specific markets. So it's interesting you said that Germany as well as Germany, this was only our 22, 23, 24, so fourth year playing games in Germany. And it feels like a distant memory. But again, even there, we're new. But you're 100 % right.

20:20Brazil was only the second year. Last year, we played there for the first time in Sao Paulo. We returned this year. And there's two things that happened. A, the excitement for the game overall grew. So just the excitement that we were able to kind of take advantage of last year when we came for the first time. I was, all right, what should we expect now from the NFL coming? In the meantime, since last year, we've hired a small team. We opened up NFL Brazil, the office that represents us year round. We have created new partnerships. We announced a partnership with Globo, the largest media company in Brazil.

20:59We have since then announced a long-term five-year, three-game deal for Rio starting next year. So what you start seeing is that once you go into market, it is on us to demonstrate that we're committed to that market. We can only grow, we can only be successful through partnerships. And those partnerships can be local clubs, can be governments, can be cities, can be our sponsor partners, our commercial partners, our broadcast partners, of course. And so for us, it's really important that we demonstrate our commitment. And what we're seeing in Brazil just the second year in is that a lot of that is getting traction.

21:38And so we have great expectation that next year, as we go for the first time to Rio, we can build on that. We can grow because in the end, it is also making an impact back to the market, whether that economic impact. We play a game there. Social impact is what we give back to communities. And again, that is through us, but also through the partnerships that we have. So for us, Brazil has developed into a really nice case study, maybe in addition to Germany, which has been kind of the newest market just before that, to how we potentially can grow in more and more markets around the world. A very different approach, I would imagine, for the game that you staged in Dublin at Croke Park, which was followed by, of course, the game the following week for the Minnesota Vikings in London, which again is, from a logistical and practical standpoint, again, a new, I imagine, something of a sort of test and learn mission for you as much as anything.

22:33And as you know, we had Commissioner Goodell with us at Leaders Week London in the week between those two games. And I remember him saying on stage something that really struck me about the wider, almost soft power of the NFL coming into markets like Ireland, like Dublin. And he was talking about the, almost the sort of trade mission, the diplomatic mission that the league was able to bring all sorts of business events, you know, bringing government stakeholders together. Maybe just reflect a little bit on that through the lens of, for example, the Dublin game this year, which, again, a first and seemed like a really special occasion.

23:15It definitely was a special occasion on many, many levels. It was a special occasion in the history and the legacy of the Steelers out of Pittsburgh and the Rooney family and the history that they've had for anyone who might not be as seen in the history of that is that you know Dan Rooney the senior was back then the U.S. ambassador to Ireland and so there's a lot of history that the Rooney family as the owners of the Pittsburgh Steelers have in that market and for them it's been always very important to give back to the community so it was just a matter of time till we had the opportunity to have a game played at market.

23:56So it resonated on that kind of cultural level and that personal level on the ownership. But it also resonated, you know, it's a new country and each country is different. And while the resonance feels like it's always very embracing and it was so welcoming and the hospitality that we experienced was so great. It felt like a mini Super Bowl with all the fans kind of traveling in and coming in, but also just with a lot of local fans and that local culture, it helps us to bridge. It helps us to unify on many, many levels. And without getting politically here, but unifying communities, unifying people is always a good thing, no matter where you are.

24:37And if sports can continue to be that vehicle where our fans kind of come together and the fans of two opposing teams can stand side by side and celebrate it again, we have long games. Our games are three hours long. We open the gates about two, two and a half hours before and we leave them open an hour after. People queue up before and they don't want to leave. That's a long commitment for people to come together and celebrate the event of us coming together. But I think what it also does is it kind of opens up, to your point, the opportunity to bridge commercial elements between partners on the U.S.

25:13In this case, Ireland. We've seen something similar when, as you mentioned, Berlin for the first time this year. we've never played a regular season game in Berlin. So it was a historic first, but we have been in Berlin with the NFL 35 years ago, 1990, shortly after the wall came down. So there's history there too. So you feel all of that kind of coming through. So the game becomes so much more than just the game. And you see that in the partnerships and in minor cases, the friendships that are being created as a result. Tell us a little bit about from a league office point of you what you learnt about the Vikings experience in moving from Dublin to London to play two games on the road internationally.

25:55We, again, had senior people from the Vikings during that week with us at Leaders Week London, and they were talking about, as you can imagine, the enormous challenge of that, the resource, the planning that had gone into that. A few months on, a couple of months on, what have you taken from that experience? And what are some of the things you might be thinking about for future models. You're exactly right. This was the first time that a team as a visiting team, again, because it's a regular season game, there's always a designated, you know, one team that gives up a home game back in the US, and that is the designated team abroad.

26:29But in this case, with the Vikings, we had a visiting team staying back-to-back games, one in Dublin, and then the following week in London. And it was an attempt. That was by the request of the Vikings, right? So that was not a leak request. That is something the Vikings, the Vikings had a really good experience last year when there was a designated team in London. They have built a very healthy fan base. They're very committed. They have marketing rights that they want to kind of see themselves grow. And for them, volunteering to travel as a visiting team back to back obviously provides a great opportunity to build additional fandom while at the same time taking on, to your point, the burden of it.

27:09That's a lot of travel. that's a lot of people moving, that is time zone differences, that is disrupting training habits and schedules. So I think, you know, probably the Vikings in this case are the best ones to ask, actually, because it comes down to the players. It's always about the players and the game, the coaches, overall the staff. You know, the result was 50-50, right? You know, won one, lost one. So in that case, I think it kind of showed what we're seeing from a league perspective is that all these games internationally are equally competitive. We measure the competitive element of the game.

27:50So kind of like how close is the game, who scores, how many drives. So we are very data driven from that perspective. And you could expect that maybe international games are a little less competitive because maybe people are more fatigued or more tired or other reasons. We don't see that at all. If maybe anything, the team's extremely motivated. The players are extremely motivated at treating it as a real game, as they should. It matters. It counts. But at the same time, there's something extremely exciting that comes with the international games. And you just feel that. So the feedback that I personally got, for example, from Andrew Miller, the CEO and president of the Vikings, was very, very positive.

28:30Again, there's always learning that comes with the logistics and the setup. And we will keep improving as we do with the games overall. Again, we're new to all of this. Running seven games comes with a lot of planning. And every year we're going to get better in what we're doing, while at the same time probably also increasing the number of games I've now played. Assessing those seven games as a single international series, give us a particular highlight, a particular challenge that you faced, and maybe something that surprised you this season in the sweep of games? Very, very good question. The learnings are endless because even if to the experience of a fan, it seems like, wow, that just went perfectly.

29:17We have a long list of things that we see we can do better. So we would never say, well, that was just a perfect game. I mean, but it always starts with the game and it ends with the game. The games have to go well. We have to ensure that operationally we can deliver against that. And you go into all these games, especially when you do seven games in different countries, on different continents. In your mind, you know all the things that go wrong, all the things that go wrong. And once you get to the end of the game and you realize that all the big things didn't go wrong, that in itself is very rewarding from that perspective.

29:54What catches me personally every time are how we create these emotions in the stadium. The sing-alongs, which are driven by the cultural relevance, whether those are local bands, local music, local rituals, which we had in every market. If you see it in a Sao Paulo game with the dancing and the music and the cultural elements we bring to that game, the same we did in Dublin. Berlin, again, I mentioned earlier, we had the 35th, so to speak, anniversary of being there in 1990. So reminiscing a little bit about when kind of the war came down, reminiscing a little bit about the history of those two countries with each other, it gets me every time.