Tough Guys

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• The Money Game
  Despite the NFL's problems, the league remains the premier advertising and marketing platform for companies that target men. An official sponsorship lets companies use all NFL and team logos in their marketing and promotions, and get value from being seen on television during games (in sideline Gatorade dunks, for example). Rival companies that lose out on an official deal cleverly formulate counterstrategies to associate themselves with NFL teams and players. Here are the marketing muscle matchups in four popular advertising categories.

Last February, 140 million people tuned in to watch the Indianapolis Colts defeat the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XLI. It was the third most-watched program ever (behind only the MASH finale and Super Bowl XXX) and the culmination of a season in which 222 million unique viewers flipped their television dial to an NFL game. The league also set a high mark in attendance, with more than 18 million tickets sold. Once again, the NFL could enter the off-season knowing it was the sporting world's top business, with more than $6 billion in revenue.

Then came the off-season and a handful of troublemakers who decided to "make it rain" on the NFL's parade. The league's postseason all-star game, the Pro Bowl, ended up being noteworthy for the chatter about whether steroid offenders such as San Diego Charger star linebacker Shawne Merriman should be allowed to play. Less than two weeks later, Tennessee Titan cornerback Adam "Pacman" Jones allegedly instigated a melee and shooting at a Las Vegas strip club, which left a bouncer paralyzed. Jones had brought $81,000 in a garbage bag and showered some 40 dancers in dollar bills (known as "making it rain") and then wanted the money back. His repeated run-ins with police got him suspended for the 2007 season. Esteemed NFL alumni, including Mike Ditka, delivered a black eye of a different sort in June, when they testified before Congress that the league hasn't provided enough benefits to former players suffering from multiple injuries, dementia, and homelessness.

Oh, and let's not forget Michael Vick's submission to federal dogfighting charges.

If any one of these events happened inside almost any other business, clients would be fleeing--or at least threatening to--and shareholder lawsuits would be flying. Rival sports leagues have had both their popularity and their effectiveness as a marketing platform for corporate partners tarnished by one player (think Barry Bonds or Kobe Bryant). Yet the NFL sloughs off scandal as smoothly as Peyton Manning picks apart defenses. This remarkable resilience is a testament to its powers of crisis and brand management, as well as an interlocking series of corporate relationships as fierce as any defense.

The NFL's corporate partners are the crème de la crème of American marketers, including Pepsi, Sprint, and Visa. The league has made membership all the more alluring in the last couple of years by shrinking the number of official sponsors from 40 to about 20, and the number of licensees from 450 to less than 100. "The combined total of spending by our sponsors through rights fees, marketing, and advertising is $1 billion annually," says NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy. Most of that money goes to the league's television partners CBS, ESPN, Fox, NBC, and the NFL Network. Companies without official sponsorships, such as Anheuser-Busch, still find a way in, making deals with teams or players. (See "The Money Game.")

If companies with marketing arrangements with the league have deep-seated concerns about the players' on- and off-field woes, they are as tight-lipped as Bill Belichick. "I don't think enough inspiring stories come out about the players," says Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank. (He may be a tad biased, considering the NFL owns an equity stake in Under Armour, which is an official league supplier of footwear.) "The NFL has been very proactive in letting us know what happened in each situation and what they are doing about it," says Andy Allmann, director of promotions and sports marketing for Southwest Airlines. "If we thought it was an epidemic, we wouldn't be partners."

The NFL and in particular second-year commissioner Roger Goodell have received near-unanimous praise for the personal-conduct policy that was enacted in April. Created in concert with the Players Association, the new get-tough rules provided the framework for the suspensions of Jones and others, even when the legal system has yet to run its course. That's precisely the point of the policy. It's about more than just protecting the NFL brand and its sponsors. It protects football's status as a team sport, rather than a loose group of troublemaking individuals. The NFL's McCarthy says that the league definitely took a hit on the Vick matter. (Commissioner Goodell declined our interview request.) But given the league's response and Nike's and Reebok's faster-than-you-can-say-PETA actions dumping him, the publicity quickly became about a single player, not the Atlanta Falcons and certainly not the NFL as a whole. "Individual players don't seem to be a disability to the brand," says Stephen A. Greyser, Harvard Business School professor in sports management.