SBJ Football: NFLPA trading card deal shows the clout of OneTeam

Most coverage of the series of deals that instantly remade the trading card industry has focused on Fanatics’ aggressive push for growth and sudden dominance. But this is every bit a story about the group on the other side of the table: OneTeam Partners, which is the partnership created by the NFLPA, MLBPA and RedBird Capital Partners to better monetize players’ likeness rights.

The trading card deals check all of the boxes for the original value proposition of OneTeam, which I explored in January. With major unions working together and the deep pockets of RedBird, the unions suspected they could take the drivers’ seats in negotiations -- leveraging their clout to credibly seek alternatives to incumbents and even walk away. (Before OneTeam, the nonprofit unions were junior partners in talks with licensees that needed both league and players’ group rights, effectively forced to go along with league deals).

The first time this worked was in 2020, when the NFLPA renewed with EA Sports at nearly a 3x increase. Now with Fanatics, the unions will get a big increase and equity in Fanatics. In that January article, I asked Panini America CEO Mark Warsop if he was worried OneTeam would force a similar escalation in his business. He said no, arguing instead that OneTeam was actually better because they would maximize sales in a way the unions themselves couldn’t. He didn’t mention the possibility of losing the deal altogether.

Footnote: Fanatics still needs to get an NFL league licensing deal if it wants to create cards with team and league IP starting in 2026. One way to do that is to buy Panini. If that doesn’t happen, then there may not be action soon. The NFL would have some leverage and no obvious reason to rush.

Barstool Sports' Dan “Big Cat” Katz opened yesterday's “Pardon My Take" podcast with this: “Today is Wednesday, August 25th, and 'Hard Knocks' has taken a nose dive.” Moments later: “We’re watching 'Hard Knocks' because that’s what we want to do, but also there are moments where it’s like, ‘Why are we doing this?’”

Such a dark, prominent review makes one wonder: Is the show just past its prime? Viewership stats the day after the premieres are bad, but maybe not as bad as they look at first glance. HBO averaged 328,000 viewers for the premiere of Episode 3 on Tuesday, up 83% from the equivalent episode for Rams/Chargers last year, but down 48% from the same episode for the Raiders in 2019, notes SBJ’s Austin Karp. Those figures are TV-only based on live+same-day viewership figures.

One thing to keep in mind is that "Hard Knocks" is not a live game, and people will consume the show like other entertainment TV -- which is to say they will watch it when they want. So the picture isn’t quite as bad as those numbers suggest. The premiere for Episode 1 on Aug. 10 averaged just 317,000 viewers, but that audience grew to 3.5 million across all HBO platforms over the week after its premiere. That's double what Episode 1 for Rams/Chargers did over the same time frame.

The third episode also saw strong positive social media reaction to the drone intro from The Star in Frisco, Texas (the Cowboys HQ and practice facility). The drone shot was a collaborative effort betweenNFL Films and Minneapolis-based Sky Candy Studios, with the drone provided byCinewhoop . What did “Pardon My Take” say about that? Its episode summary in Apple Podcasts says: “'Hard Knocks' has completely fallen off with few redeeming moments outside of the sick drone shot.”

The Cowboys are always a draw, but this is an era when every team produces “inside training camp” content on their own channels and teams are more protective of inside secrets than ever.

Despite the sluggish pandemic sponsorship market, the Super Bowl champions are seeing everything come together at once for a big pop. The Buccaneers have signed 20 new partners and renewed 23 of 24 expiring contracts this offseason, according to Chief Corporate Development & Brand Officer Atul Khosla. That adds up to a 35% increase over 2019 (or 40% if you count from pandemic-ravaged 2020), he says, though hard numbers are confidential.

What’s going right in Tampa? The Super Bowl helps, but most of these are 2-3 year sales cycles. Khosla credits a combination of data-backed efforts to prove ROI, the creation of community/charity projects that add a cause component to key deals, an internally integrated approach to developing assets, and some creative restructuring of rights. “What we have found in our market is that we have to be incredibly thoughtful in who we are partnering with, how we are doing it and the return we can show,” Khosla said.

Take Mosaic, a major fertilizer producer and one of Tampa’s seven Fortune 500 companies. Fertilizer doesn’t exactly fit a standard sponsorship template, but its cause-centric deal with the Bucs focuses on hunger, with a pledge to open five new food pantries and donate $10 per tackle this year to the Feeding Tampa Bay charity.

In beer, the Bucs did some rejiggering to get an overall increase while adding players: A-B InBev and MillerCoors both renewed, but local craft brewer Coppertail is also on board with pouring rights, a custom-branded can and beer. Despite the new competition, Miller is happy because it can bring its own craft brands in, and Bud gets expanded IP in craft and seltzer. In a similar vein, the Bucs brought in several new local food and beverage providers in the stadium to round out the experience.

The biggest new deal is with Fifth Third Bank, filling a category that had been empty since 2015. Cincinnati-based Fifth Third gets a stadium entry gate, a new premium lounge with views of pre-game player activities that opens in 2022, the team mobile app -- along with an educational component on social justice and financial responsibility in schools.

The Jaguars’ political fortunes look far different today than they did in January, when the city council dealt a body blow to owner Shad Khan’s visions of redeveloping the neighborhood around TIAA Bank Field, which he has said is critical to the team’s sustainability.

On Tuesday, that same council voted to pay for half of the team’s proposed $120 million football operations facility. The W was not exactly a surprise, but the lack of opposition -- or even debate -- was very encouraging for team execs, particularly after the same council narrowly voted down a $245 million investment in the Jags' planned $450 million Lot J mixed use development with the help of surprise ’no” votes.

What’s changed? After the January defeat, the Jaguars and team president Mark Lamping retrenched. They listened to critics who said they had not been sufficiently proactive in explaining their vision for the stadium district and launched a series of community meetings. They also put the separate projects under a single brand, creating the "1stDowntownJacksonville" branding, which serves as a rallying point for supporters and a standing statement of principles.

Approving $60 million for a practice facility is no guarantee the council will also approve a $330 million phase one of the $515 million Shipyards project on the other side of the stadium when it comes up later this fall -- or a reworked Lot J project when it comes back again, or an eventual stadium renovation. But it’s a good indicator that Khan is more likely than not to ultimately get the taxpayer help he wants, barring a major change in the political winds.

For much more on the Jags’ grand turnaround plan on and off the field, read next Monday’s NFL season preview in SBJ.

• Bleacher Report’s debut of “Squad Ride Kickoff Week presented by DraftKings” on Aug. 31 will headline the brand’s new betting and football series this fall. The series is a live, in-depth look at the sportsbook’s offerings heading into the season and will be hosted by B/R NFL expert Connor Rogers and B/R Betting’s Greg Ivory, alongside DraftKings contributors. The show will be on the B/R App and YouTube and Twitter. Also, B/R will debut “Ride Along,” a new series that will feature betting talent reporting on-site at marquee matchups. The company’s B/R Gridiron vertical will launch “Punishment League,” a weekly series that will follow four competitors in a fantasy league run by DraftKings, with losers being assigned punishments chosen by the B/R app audience. They will also expand the brand of the six-season-old animated series “Gridiron Heights” with “Gridiron Heights Live,” a parody of post-game press conferences.
  
  

• In the latest episode of our video series SBJ Spotlight, I spoke with my boss Abe Madkour on whether vaccine mandates or other fan attendance rules will hurt league business. 
  
  

• The NFL's recently announced limits on game-day access to team locker rooms for reporters "will go largely unchallenged" with the Delta variant surging, per Yahoo Sports' Jason Owens. But he cautions that those restrictions cannot become the norm "if we manage to work our way past the depths of COVID-19 by next season." Owens: "If it doesn't, the league's media partners will certainly have something to say."
  
  

• Pandemic lockdowns may be mostly over, but NFL sponsor Pepsi wants fans to stay inside anyway this fall. A new campaign called “Made for Watching Football” is anchored by a digital ad featuring Showtime's "Billions" star David Costabile. In it, he implores his fellow football fans to stay in front of the game even though they have brunch and shopping plans. Pepsi is currently in talks with the NFL on extending its sponsorship of the league, which expires after this season. VaynerMedia did the creative.
  
  

• GSE Worldwide has acquired DEC Management, a South Florida-based agency founded by NFL agent David Canter that represents more than 50 players in the league, per my colleague Liz Mullen.