Early NFL Teams, Jim Thorpe, and Instability

The NFL is nearly synonymous with America today. Practically nothing is more quintessentially and universally American than tuning in every Sunday (and Monday, and Thursday… and sometimes Saturdays and holidays too) to watch the world’s most beautiful ballet of violence. It generates the most revenue of any sports league globally and sets new records for team valuations each year. But it wasn’t always this way.

The history of the NFL mirrors America’s own development: scrappy small-town teams rode the successive growth waves of the automobile, TV, the Internet and social media to grow larger than the even the founders’ wildest dreams. Whether you watch football or not, the NFL is one incredible business story, and one that we’ve taken more lessons from over the years for Acquired itself than perhaps any other episode we’ve made.

Note: This is a remastered release of our original January 2023 episode, updated to today's Acquired production standards. It also features a full hour+ followup section at the end covering the seismic shifts in the NFL’s business since the original episode’s release. Much has happened in those three years: Taylor Swift entered the league (via merger 🙂), streaming went mainstream (and took over Thanksgiving and Christmas), sports gambling exploded from 46 million to 76 million bettors, and — in perhaps the most surprising development — private equity finally stormed the gates of the NFL. Oh, and average franchise valuations grew by 60% from $4.5 billion to over $7 billion. Communist capitalism is alive and well!

We're also releasing this episode in advance of Super Bowl LX here in San Francisco, where Acquired is hosting the NFL’s inaugural Super Bowl Innovation Summit!

Sponsors:

Many thanks to our partners:

• Vanta
• Sierra
• Crusoe
• Sentry (+ join the list for Sentry & Vercel’s Super Bowl Fan Zone party)

Links:

• Innovation Summit details and all Super Bowl LX Week events in San Francisco (note content from the Innovation Summit will be posted publicly the week after the Super Bowl — we’ll update this page with links when available)
• America’s Game
• Sports Illustrated’s oral history of the famous Joe Namath “pool photo”
• All episode sources

Carve Outs:

• The Menu
• Peyton’s Places

More Acquired:

• Get email updates and vote on future episodes!
• Join the Slack
• Subscribe to ACQ2
• Check out the latest swag in the ACQ Merch Store!

00:00:00 Intro
00:00:37 Welcome to the Remastered NFL Episode
00:06:05 Origins of Football & the Forward Pass (1869-1905)
00:14:34 The Founding of the NFL (1920)
00:41:52 Bert Bell's "Any Given Sunday" Philosophy (1946)
01:03:28 Pete Rozelle Transforms the League (1960)
01:56:34 The Creation of the Super Bowl (1966)
02:09:47 Monday Night Football Invents Modern Sports TV (1970)
02:37:19 The NFL's Business Model Explained
02:39:28 CTE & the Kaepernick Controversy (2016)
02:48:36 Analysis: Playbook & 7 Powers Analysis
03:21:04 2026 UPDATE: Netflix, Youtube, Amazon Streaming, T-Swift, Gambling & New TV Deals
03:57:11 Private Equity Enters the NFL (2024)
04:14:08 Conclusion & Thank Yous 

‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.