Just when I got done saying the NFL Combine isn’t that interesting, we get a reporter-on-reporter fight in an Indianapolis Starbucks. Tabloid content and more data on Tom Brady’s unique role with the Raiders, all in one story. Maybe I should go next year.
New Texans President Mike Tomon wants the club to better engage its fan base. Houston Texans
New Texans President Mike Tomon keeps coming back to the same word about his new job: opportunity. He steps into the top business position for a team with consecutive AFC South titles, a 23-year-old star QB, a growing, diverse home market and ownership willing to spend.
And here’s the kicker: a major stadium redevelopment -- typically a silver bullet for rapid revenue growth -- is still to come.
“To me, you put all those things together, with an emphasis on this transformative moment with the stadium, that is a one-of-one opportunity, and it was a really special thing,” said Tomon today in his first interview since he was hired. “I don’t know if I could have written it better. It came together nicely.”
Tomon, a 2015 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree, had spent the last 11 years at Legends, where he touched major NFL projects such as the development and sales related to SoFi Stadium and Allegiant Stadium. Now having moved 3.5 hours south to Houston, he replaces Greg Grissom, who left in January after four years in which he helped stabilize the organization after a tumultuous period.
Waking a sleeping giant
The Texans have long fostered a sense in league circles that its brand and business has underperformed relative to potential. While the franchise has held its own -- it owns eight division titles in 23 seasons, consistently finishing in the NFL’s top third in attendance -- the team has been in the shadow of the Cowboys since its inception and has never been seen as a top-flight national TV draw.
Tomon is eager to try to change that that.
The stadium is the singular project, but better fan and brand development is key, too. Owner Cal McNair and his wife, Hannah, know what the team means to Houston and have “big aspirations” for what the business can be, Tomon said, which encouraged him.
“When we look at Houston and the surrounding areas, we feel really fortunate to have the [fan] base that we do,” Tomon said. “The opportunity that we have on top of it, that is where we get really excited. We know we are fan-centric. We are focused in on our base, and ultimately, our ability to grow them, to engage them. That is a charge for us. That is a focus for us.”
On the venue front, NRG Stadium needs billions of dollars in upgrades to stay in line with modern trends in fan experience and compete for Super Bowls. Tomon was mostly noncommittal on specific plans, but he did say the team is focused on renovations, not a new stadium.
Also, he said they are not considering relocation. “While we are open to all options, one of them emphatically is not leaving Greater Houston,” he noted.
Tomon said there’s a “great foundation” to the staff he now leads, saying the team has “strong culture” and “great human capital.” But, he said, he’ll judge himself by the growth in the team’s business sophistication.
“My focus at this stage is on the business to be seen as world-class,” he said.
Steelers owner Art Rooney II ranked 28th out of 32 owners in an NFLPA survey of players' perception of their work environments. Courtney Payton
The NFLPA added two more questions to the ownership category in this year’s player survey, and they drove disproportionate results -- if the goal is to drive coverage and commentary that might shame owners into changing their behavior.
The two new questions really get at the heart of what most people think it means to be a good owner: “contributions to a positive team culture” and “commitment to building a competitive team.” Those questions joined last year’s evaluation of owners’ “perceived willingness to invest in facilities.”
The worst of it appeared to come in New England and Pittsburgh, ranked 29th and 28th for ownership, respectively, making them the two lowest-scoring owners from franchises that are generally (or at least historically) considered to be well-run. There’s something about the juxtaposition of the player feedback with the Krafts' and Rooneys’ reputation that lent extra energy to the local reaction.
“[Art Rooney II] is the biggest problem we have,” reads the top-voted comment at Reddit’s main Steelers page.
In Boston, 98.5 The Sports Hub sports talker Tony Massarotti on Robert Kraft: “Thirtieth in commitment to winning. If that doesn’t slap you in the face and cause you to rethink how you’re approaching your operation, I don’t know what would.” Later on the same show, his co-host Michael Felger: “Down there with the dregs of the dregs.”
As for the bottom three teams in the ownership category, well, this isn’t the first time they’ve confronted the possibility their owners are problematic.
Here’s the thing that should worry the low-scoring owners: They’re serious outliers. Fifteen out of 32 owners, nearly half, scored a B+ or better. Twenty out of 32 got at least a B-. A large majority of NFLPA members think their owners are OK, more or less. Even the Giants’ John Mara, one of this season’s fan whipping boys, got a C+. Considering that, the Ds in Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh, New England, Arizona, Carolina and the F for the Jets really stand out.
As intriguing as the NFLPA survey is -- and it’s brilliant labor politics if you ask me -- it does have limitations, and we should all be careful in describing exactly what it says and doesn’t say. Also, there are obvious reasons in some cases for big changes, but I’m generally skeptical about the huge variations year to year. Did the Falcons, Commanders and Chargers really all go from among the worst workplace environments to the best in a single year? Woody Johnson got a B+ last year and an F this year -- did he really change that much?
In any case, my SBJ colleagues did yeoman’s work summarizing the best reactions across the 30 NFL markets (here for the AFC and here for the NFC).
UFL training camps are scheduled to start March 3, but the league doesn't have a contract with its players association yet. Getty Images
Would the UFL players really go on strike before the league’s second season starts? That would seem unlikely, but the United Football Players Association certainly got my attention earlier this week, when I learned that all 24 QBs in the league held out of a pre-training camp gathering. That level of collective action should make any executive listen.
Let’s watch this space. UFL leadership and its owners are trying to toe the delicate line all new sports properties must -- put out a viable product, grow a business and take advantage of early success, all while aggressively containing costs. As the AAF, XFL 1.0, XFL 2.0 and all spring football leagues know, that last part is especially hard in American football because of the sheer size of rosters, the equipment and the risk.
As the UFL goes from season 1 post-USFL-XFL merger to season 2, it has to graduate from the minimum viable product of 2024 into something more fulsome and aggressive. That’s one thing when it comes to hiring marketers, sponsorship execs and sales teams, who might literally pay for themselves. But does increasing player salaries translate into more revenue in the short term? That’s a murkier question, unless we’re talking about massive increases that would blow up the cost-containment concept anyway. So the fledgling union has to find another way to incentivize raises.
New internal data from Netflix analyzed by SBJ’s Austin Karp shows that the Omaha Productions-led docu-series “Receiver,” released on July 10, had just 7.5 million views in the back half of 2024. That was well below the 12.7 million views that “Quarterback” had during the same time frame in 2023.
Oak View Group was named the new F&B partner of the Raiders at Allegiant Stadium in a 10-year deal, giving OVG its first NFL F&B client, reports SBJ’s Bret McCormick.
Laura Rutledge will continue working NFL sidelines for ESPN as part of her recent contract extension, notes Karp.
The NFL is set to leave the chain gang on the sideline and will plan to adopt Hawk-Eye’s camera-based virtual measurement system starting in the 2025 season, reports SBJ’s Joe Lemire.
The UFL is working with Salesforce on a new collaboration, utilizing Agentforce, the agentic layer of the Salesforce Platform, to service ticket holders. Salesforce also will partner with the UFL on a new pre-game feature on Fox, breaking down an upcoming game based on player performance data.
DraftKings took in a record $436 million from Super Bowl LIX, with same-game parlay handle up about 40% from last year, notes SBJ’s Bill King. The game also delivered the company’s best day of gross-gaming revenue ever.
