Knocked Out: The Once and Future Demise of Football

Abstract

This paper will analyze one strategic threat to the National Football League (NFL). Football is king. Football is the most popular sport in America. The NFL is the most profitable professional sports league in America. From the sharp increase in fantasy football participation to television ratings, the NFL has enjoyed unparalleled success recently. This paper will argue that significant market forces will threaten the NFL. This paper acknowledges the many recent public relations difficulties the NFL has faced. Player conduct ranging from domestic abuse to performance enhancing drug use has created a difficult media environment. Further, NFL owners have faced difficulties ranging from drug addiction to accusation of complicity when handling player discipline issues. This paper will argue that while those things are damaging in the short-term they do not represent a strategic threat to the sport itself. This paper will argue that the recent NFL Players’ Association lawsuit against the league for damages caused by concussions will lead to very serious difficulties for the sport itself. The lawsuit has been settled for hundreds of millions of dollars. This paper will argue, however, that the lawsuit itself is not a grave threat to football. This paper will argue that the strategic threat revealed in the lawsuit is subtle. This paper will argue that increasing insurance costs – driven by threats of future lawsuits – will create changes to the current marketplace for football that could threaten the long-term viability of organized football. This paper acknowledges the inherent difficulty of predicting future events. Therefore, this paper uses argument by analogy to show how increasing insurance costs have affected popular, youth-oriented activities previously. While this paper does acknowledge there may be some important differences between the analogues selected and football, this paper argues that the insurance mechanism will create significant supply problems that will hamper the sustained popularity of the sport.