The NFL
Acquired
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
4.7 • 5.2K Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2026
⏱️ 257 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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:
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:
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00:00:00 Start
00:00:37 Intro - 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.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So in my headphones, I have, are you ready for some football? |
| 0:03.2 | Yeah, I was listening to that too. Yes. Dude, it gets you so pumped up. It totally does. I feel like I grew up on the Fox Sports theme. Do da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-ba. It always makes me think of Thanksgiving. It makes me think of, I think it was a jock-jams tape that I bought. Who got the truth? |
| 0:23.6 | Is it you? |
| 0:24.5 | Is it you? It makes me think of, I think it was a jock jam's tape that I bought. Who got the truth? |
| 0:23.6 | Is it you? |
| 0:24.5 | Is it you? |
| 0:25.1 | Is it you? |
| 0:26.1 | Is it you? |
| 0:30.2 | Is it you? |
| 0:30.2 | Sit me down. |
| 0:32.4 | Say it straight. |
| 0:33.6 | Another story on the way. |
| 0:36.1 | Who got the truth? |
| 0:57.0 | Welcome to this special remastered edition of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert. I'm David Rosenthal. And we are your hosts. Three years ago, in January of 2023, we released an episode on the National Football League, which, David, I think, |
| 1:03.0 | is absolutely an essential part of Acquired Cannon. Totally agree. We took so much from that episode. |
| 1:10.0 | But listeners, a few things have happened since then. One, the NFL has become even more of a juggernaut. |
| 1:16.4 | Two, Acquired's audience grew a lot, so many of you never heard that episode. |
| 1:24.4 | And three, the ultimate Acquired universe crossover happened between the NFL and Taylor Swift. |
| 1:26.4 | Yes. |
| 1:31.2 | It was kind of a bad timing when we made this originally because it was right before that happened. Yes. But Ben, you forgot the most important thing, which is that this year in |
| 1:37.9 | 2006, we are hosting the Super Bowl's Innovation Summit at the Super Bowl in San Francisco this year. Yes, we are. Listeners' |
| 1:46.0 | details on how and when you can watch that are in the show notes. So to help us come up to |
... |
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