ESPN Taking Over NFL Network’s Lease Near SoFi Stadium
NEW ORLEANS — In the week leading up to Super Bowl LIX between the Chiefs and Eagles, the chatter in New Orleans was about anything but the game.
Last weekend, the shocking Luka Doncic–Anthony Davis swap shook the sports world to its core, and NBA trade deadline drama continued to steal headlines from the NFL all week as DeAaron Fox, Zach LaVine, and Jimmy Butler all moved.
Beyond the distraction of NBA news, two major NFL storylines emerged in New Orleans, neither of them about the Chiefs or Eagles: the NFL’s plan to add an 18th regular season game, and the league’s aggressive international expansion, which will include a game in Australia in 2026.
For four days, we posted up in the New Orleans Convention Center on “Radio Row” to sit down with more than 70 current and former players, team execs, league execs, and non-NFL athletes for candid conversations. We asked every player about the possible 18th game and every team and league exec about the push into Europe and beyond.
Here are five comments that have stuck with me since we took down our live set Friday afternoon. Check out our full playlist to watch all the interviews with your favorite names.
1. Chiefs President Mark Donovan on international expansion:
“Lamar [Hunt] felt like the future of the NFL was international. And he felt that way in 1975. … For us, we look at international growth as the future, but we have the opportunity to really capitalize on it today. And our players are doing the same thing, and our league is doing the same thing. I applaud the league for allowing the teams to actually take a lead in growing internationally.
“We invested heavily in Germany, we’ve invested in Mexico, and we hope to continue to invest in even more markets as we go… Thirty years from now, there’s going to be some kid in Madrid who’s a fan of the Chiefs. And you’re going to ask him, how did he become a fan of the Chiefs? It’s because, ‘Well, my dad was a fan in 2020 when they were doing this.’”
A few things to unpack here. The Jaguars have played more games in London than any team, and remember, they get to keep revenue from playing games in Wembley Stadium. Plus, Shad Khan also owns Fulham FC. So it makes some sense for the Jags to keep playing in London. But does it make sense for all NFL teams? Are fans clamoring to see their team play games abroad? I’m not convinced of that.
From the NFL side of things, the appeal is clear: more global reach, more revenue. That brings us to the next sound bite.
2. 49ers President Al Guido on an international Super Bowl:
“This is a question for Roger [Goodell]: Do we ever take the biggest game that we have, and not host it here in the U.S.?
“Listen, I think it’s really interesting. And I understand all the issues with it around the performance side, how far it might have to go, and that is what I think is key to all this, it’s no different from [going to] 18 and 2, which is let’s make sure the game stays how good it is. That has to be first and foremost. … If it just so happens that we can figure out, schedule-wise, and we can play somewhere else, and the fan bases really want it, well then, why not?”
It’s no secret that the National Football League wants to be the International Football League. And it’s not so hard to picture a Super Bowl in London or Madrid. The biggest fans of each team could make a European trip out of it, and the NFL would have you believe that it has now successfully created hordes of new team-specific fans abroad.
NFL media executive Hans Schroeder told us that when he was in London for the Vikings-Jets game in October, he noticed, “Typically at a lot of these games, you’d see a rainbow [of jerseys]… this stadium was 80% purple. There were Vikings fans. So we had clearly developed a number of Vikings fans there.”
3. Sports agent Leigh Steinberg on the NFL’s embrace of betting
“It’s a ticking time bomb. Eventually, you’re going to have a player who either, one, reveals inside information to a gambler, or two, shaves performance. And all of a sudden, the whole sanctity of professional sports, the belief that games are played with full intensity by both teams on the same rules on an even playing field, gets shattered. And then you know what you have? You have wrestling. So I think it was not well thought through.
No one thought through what the end point was. … what happened to that impregnable wall between gambling and sports that ensured there were no alternative factors in performance?”
Indeed, when you arrive on Radio Row, everywhere you look it’s DraftKings and FanDuel branding. You cannot escape them.
Steinberg, who consulted with director Cameron Crowe on the movie “Jerry Maguire” (leading many to call him “the real-life Jerry Maguire,” a mantle he embraced, but he was not the only agent who helped Crowe), came all the way back from the depths of alcoholism and signed Patrick Mahomes to his agency in 2017. (Mahomes’s day to day agent these days is Chris Cabott of Steinberg Sports & Entertainment.) Steinberg is taken seriously in the football world and wrote a very smart op-ed in the New York Times last May warning about the leagues getting in so deep with betting companies. I happen to agree with most of what he wrote, and you need look no further than the recent gambling scandals in baseball and basketball for proof.
It’s too late now to pull out, so the leagues must work harder to protect the integrity of their games.
4. Billie Jean King on why we are at a tipping point in women’s sports
“Money. Investment. Investment by billionaires, not millionaires. Billionaires. We have to have investment in us like you had in the men. We are so far behind, but to your point, we are at a tipping point. For me, I’ve lived my whole life to see this start to happen. I know if I die tomorrow that it’s just starting. But this is what I’ve worked for my whole life is to help us have more for women’s sports.”
Talk about someone who knows what they’re talking about. We’ve tracked every moment in the investment flood into women’s sports in the past couple of years, headlined by the WNBA but also the NWSL, PWHL, volleyball, and more women’s leagues. King nailed it: follow the money, and the money right now is showing that the deepest pockets are spending to have a stake in the women’s game.
5. Greg Olsen on Fox and Tom Brady
“I’ve called a Super Bowl once, I want to call them again. That should not be earth-shattering, headline news for anyone… My aspirations of taking this from day one back in 2021 when I started, to today, have not changed. I want to call great games.
“My personal aspirations are completely independent and disconnected from my relationship with Fox. My relationship with Fox, and Tom [Brady], and Erin [Andrews], and [Kevin Burkhardt], those are my friends, those are people I care about, I want to see them succeed.
“My relationship with Fox is positive. They know where I stand. They’ve encouraged me to have high aspirations. They’ve encouraged me to try to be as good as I possibly can. So I think some of my comments about wanting to call top games, wherever that is and however that plays out, come across that I want to leave Fox and I hate Fox. That is not true. I’m on the record right now, and I probably need to do a better job communicating where I stand. … no resentment or animosity towards the people at Fox.”
Ironically, the way I framed the question was about Brady’s conflict of interest as a part owner of the Raiders and a color analyst, but Olsen took his response straight to his own position, so he clearly wanted to speak out on this. Olsen was alluding to widespread reports—and some comments of his own—in the previous ten days indicating that he is frustrated with not getting to call a Super Bowl, and frustrated with Fox. Now he made clear to us he has no beef with Brady, and I believe him. But he also made clear he wants to be a No. 1 NFL broadcaster. I’ve already written on the Brady conflict, which I think is a legitimate problem, even though the NFL has dismissed such concerns.
Unless Brady quits the booth (which I think is quite possible, and he can cite his Raiders role as his out), the only other path for Olsen is if another network bumps their lead analyst for Olsen, like Fox did to Olsen for Brady.
