How the NFL Swallowed the Entertainment Business
While viewership of everything else on traditional TV plummeted, the NFL somehow got bigger.
Roger Goodell, commissioner of the National Football League (NFL), during an interview for an episode of "The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations" in New York, US, on Friday, Jan. 3, 2025.
Photographer: Jeenah Moon/BloombergGood afternoon from Chicago and happy Super Bowl Sunday. A few years ago, I made the decision to stop watching the NFL. I am a gigantic sports fan and, having grown up without a team in Los Angeles, was devoted to the Green Bay Packers. But football struck me as fundamentally unsafe.
I had been reading about concussions for years and began to see the NFL as the modern equivalent of the gladiatorial games — a violent, if undeniably entertaining, distraction. I couldn’t stop paying attention to football altogether. It is too integral to culture and my job. I kept up by listening to podcasts and following scores, but I didn’t watch many games.