A Rebirth of Rivals to the NFL Monopoly

For nearly a century, owners of U.S. professional sports teams have lobbied respective governmental bodies for public subsidies to build stadiums and arenas across the country, using franchise relocation as leverage. Myriad justifications have been used as a defense for the public subsidization of this private enterprise, ranging from the economic impact of capital intensive projects to the psychic regional benefit of being a host city to a professional sports franchise. But do these justifications hold up under increased scrutiny? In this case, students are placed in the position of the Mayor of Oakland as she is faced with a dilemma regarding publicly subsidizing a new Raiders stadium. Students will examine the issue through the lens of multiple key stakeholders, and will ultimately have to decide whether the city should utilize public funds to keep the Davis family happy and the Raiders in Oakland, or withhold funding for public good and risk the franchise relocating elsewhere.

This case study places the student in the role of the first Black team president in NFL history, Jason Wright. The case study is intended to provide students with an opportunity to explore the historic nature of Wright’s hiring in the context of the Washington Football Team’s contemporaneous brand identity crisis. In addition, students will be expected to study the one hundred year- history of the NFL through its racial hiring practices, both on and off the field of play. WFT, then known as the Washington Redskins, was instrumental in the exclusion of Black players from the league and was the last NFL team to integrate. WFT’s actions in 2021 to hire a Black team president and to change their team nickname from an insensitive Native American slur provide students with an opportunity to critically examine and integrate an historic progression with a current racial and social justice challenge with multiple dimensions.

The landscape of college athletics is forever changing, and in July 2016 the Big 12 conference announced its intentions to explore a new round of expansion. The smallest of the 'Power Five' conferences in NCAA D1 FBS, the Big 12's quest for football competitiveness and the need for a conference championship game drive a complex and layered analysis of the best path forward. With consideration of the Big 12's national media rights, revenue sharing agreements, brand-building/recruiting opportunities, and structural dynamics, this case allows students to conduct both an internal and external analysis of the Conference's decision making process while weighing a myriad of stakeholder priorities.

The mid-1980's represented the beginning of a radical shift that altered the way sports media rights were packaged, sold and coveted. That shift began on precisely Jan. 24, 1984 inside a majestic hotel in the charming Alpine city of Lausanne, Switzerland. On that date, IMG's Barry Frank sold the rights to televise the 1988 Winter Olympics in an excruciating and benchmark-shattering process that forever changed the way sports-TV rights were negotiated. This case examines the negotiation tactics and interpersonal dynamics Frank leveraged so masterfully in selling the '88 Calgary Winter Olympics. Then, the case narrative shifts into the 'future', detailing Frank's role in selling MLB's media rights in 1995, and the ACC's rights in 2003. Spanning three decades, three property rights holders, and three different media rights landscapes, this case takes students inside the mind of one of the industry's true negotiations pioneers.