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Knees bent against racism in the Premier League and megalomaniac league projects to save football amid an unprecedented economic crisis. Scenes that show that sport, by necessity or commitment, is going to slipstream from what society transpires. However, in a reality full of tonality and pessimism there is a strange oasis full of success. The United States American Football League (NFL), despite the difficult pandemic outlook, has managed to revalidate and even enlarge a project while continuing to sign outrageous contracts and sponsorships, made decisions against the current with respect to the advance of the Covid and tied in short the social and political demands. All this to fulfill a single mission: never stop playing to continue generating income.
To defend the World Cup every two years instead of every four, the FIFA President Gianni Infantino It was clear a few months ago when they asked him why this new protest: «The Super Bowl (NFL final) is played every year. Why not have a World Cup every two? ». The American football league, as evidenced by the words of the Italian president, is synonymous with economic and sporting success throughout the world. The competition, despite the pandemic, signed a new television contract this year that will earn it more than 100,000 million euros for the next eleven seasons. 27 of its 30 franchises were included this year by Forbes magazine in the list of the 50 most valuable teams in the world and are the Dallas Cowboys, which have not won the league since 1996, the number one team in the ranking, valued at a figure that is around 5,000 million euros, 1,000 more than Real Madrid. Gleaming figures that must be contextualized, since the NFL is a closed circuit, without promotions or relegation, a reality that is absolutely the opposite of European sport. However, when compared to its peers (NBA, NHL, MLB), nobody makes more money than football. His following in the United States, for example, is five times that of the NBA.
Not only economically it is a success. Also in sports, where thanks to its structure (distributions for equitable television rights and salary limits) it generates a perfect greenhouse in which its 30 teams start the season opting for the title. An arithmetic that has led to the 21st century having 13 different champions. “The United States is totally in love with American football. Even the college league has a massive following. It is a sociocultural issue “, argues the journalist Pepe Rodriguez, director of the podcast ‘Pepe Diario’, to explain the resounding success of the sport.
Controversial
Despite the fact that the NFL has breathed good health for years, it has not been all simple and easy. The league suffered one of its greatest moments of friction in 2017, when some of its players began to kneel during the anthem due to cases of police violence against African Americans. The mess ended with former President Donald Trump asking franchise owners to fire the rebels. The owners, despite being known for their apolitical out-of-doors character, supported their players although, along the way, an indelible stain remained: the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, one of the media leaders of this uprising, went from star to persona non grata and since then has not been hired by any team. “The NFL is the league of all Americans, it does not respond to minorities or specific ideologies. It is a white league, a product that does not want to offend anyone so that it continues to be consumed. Quite the opposite of the NBA, a league followed by minorities and close to the Republican movement, which has generated a certain detachment, “explains Rodríguez.
With the sixth wave of the coronavirus, however, the league is back to its old ways. While other competitions prefer to postpone games rather than relax sanitary protocols, the NFL, since last week, only performs test unvaccinated players (about 3%) and those who show symptoms, an equation that allows athletes with Covid, although asymptomatic, to jump onto the grass. As Rodríguez recalls, canceling an NFL game costs the organization about 40 million euros, a figure absolutely contrary to what the NFL has been even in a pandemic: a wheel of unstoppable success.
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