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Ladies and gentlemen, gather ’round as we venture into the bizarre bazaar of the business world, where NFL games are like high-stakes poker nights for a bunch of corporate folks in suits, and the players are merely the jazz hands in a dramatic production about advertising revenue.
Earlier this month, in an episode fit for a soap opera (or perhaps just Sunday Night Football), the Kansas City Chiefs scored not just touchdowns but also an unexpected visitor: the reggaeton superstar, Daddy Yankee! Yes, the Pepsi to Taylor Swift’s Coke, because who doesn’t want a Puerto Rican rapper at a football game to spice up the usual lineup of gigantic men smashing into each other at high speeds? Daddy Yankee strolled into Arrowhead Stadium, where he was seen trying on running back Isiah Pacheco’s Super Bowl rings. One can only imagine that somewhere, Travis Kelce was grumbling, “Do I have to share my celebrity spotlight with everyone now?”
This latest spectacle is part of the NFL’s “Por La Cultura” campaign, which tries to woo Latino fans rather than just counting on them like a Super Bowl wing platter. The NFL, which already towers over TV ratings like Goliath, has decided that it still wants to bulk up on demographics. Apparently, it’s not enough to just have dibs on the average American household’s plasma screen; they also want to monopolize the airwaves in Spanish. What’s next? Hooking up with the Kardashians for a reality show called “Keeping Up with the Quarterbacks”?
Marissa Solis, the NFL’s senior vice president of global brand and consumer marketing, has heard the clarion call of growth—just not the kind that comes from adding one more bowl of guacamole to your Super Bowl spread. No, she refers to a “mathematically impossible growth” without Latino audiences, which are apparently the key ingredient in the NFL’s secret sauce. In other words, the league is like your aunt who believes the secret to her world-famous chili is adding just the right amount of cumin—and she accidentally spilled the whole jar in.
Meanwhile, the NFL is on a world tour to bring American football to places where the only pigskin familiar to fans is wrapped in chorizo. They kicked off the season hosting a game in Brazil, streamed on Peacock—because football’s true calling is apparently drifting into the Amazon one touchdown at a time. Yes, and if you’re wondering, the NFL is now the soccer of American football, trying to create a transnational love story that crosses borders, while ensuring their revenue can cross them too.
The NFL has gone full-blown “Spanish-language Super Bowl” mode now, with both Fox Deportes and Telemundo teaming up to provide more Spanish broadcasts than you can shake a stick at—a platonic ideal of football viewing, where one might even argue that the halftime shows are now just contests of who can dance better, and maybe, just maybe, who can sell more nachos.
In a twist of irony befitting any sitcom, it turns out that 70% of viewers tuning into the Super Bowl had never even bothered to watch any regular season games. Heck, it’s possible they just tuned in for the snacks and the commercials, because what says American culture more than watching a game for the overpriced advertisements that are only slightly more entertaining than the actual game?
So here’s to the NFL, where every attempt at growth is as unpredictable as a last-minute field goal attempt. Just remember: all the numbers, while impressive on paper, can’t account for the fact that the real MVP of this business operation might just be the Latino fans—because in this game of corporate capitalism, it seems you can never have too many nachos, or too many viewers, trying to decipher the absurdity unfolding on the screen. Cheers!
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