The G.O.P.’s Midterm NFL Blitz

John Ourand (0:01)

This is nirvana for TV networks, because what they're charging and what these campaigns are paying is the top of the market. So every two years, it's turned out, it used to be every four years, but now it's every two years. This is just such a boon. This is why the NFL costs each network two billion dollars a year.

Peter Hamby (0:20)

Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Puck's podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and the players who run it all.

I'm Peter Hamby. It's Wednesday, September 23rd. Today, I'm joined by John Ourand to talk about how political campaigns are spending big this fall to reach voters during NFL and college football games, and how much those ads are swamping local TV markets in big battleground states. John also gives me some thoughts on how the Paramount Warner Brothers merger, now approved, will affect sports fans. Both companies hold sports rights from Major League Baseball to UFC, and some of those deals could be on David Ellison's chopping block. We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.

Happy Wednesday, everybody, and welcome to The Powers That Be. I'm joined today by my colleague, John Ourand. We're going to talk about the first couple of weeks of the NFL season. We're also going to dig in to what the now approved, it seems like, Warner Brothers Paramount merger looks like for streaming and sports, the big leagues. But first, John, good to see you, my friend. I hope you had a good time at the Maryland Tailgate drinking in that blacktop parking lot, as Terps do when they tailgate. Did you have fun at that game?

John Ourand (1:49)

You know, Maryland football, the tailgate was fun because you got to see all these old people, even though you're wearing an LSU shirt.

We shouldn't even call it tailgating as much as it is meeting up with other folks. Right up until opening kickoff, Maryland happens to hate this guy, James Franklin, who was our coach in waiting. He went to Penn State, then he beat us by 60 points a game and ran up the score. Now he's at Virginia Tech and we were going to get something over on him finally, and they come in and they beat us again.

Peter Hamby (2:18)

Well, my takeaway from that game was I didn't watch it. I was more getting ready for the LSU Ole Miss game, but my buddy who lives in Maryland texted my college group chat a video of the Fox Sports pregame and one of the guys, one of the announcers, clearly not from the region, referred to the DMV as Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. It was like, they must have brought in the JV squad. Yeah, not great. Not a great look. Anyway, the NFL is upon us. We love college football too, of course. What's jumping at you so far from this season? I mean, I paid attention to Tom Brady because I was watching the commander's Cowboys game, unfortunately, when Jaden went down and he uttered an, oh shit, live on television. He also called a Dak Prescott pass a piss missile on television, which I hadn't heard before. But we've talked in the past about Brady starting out slow as an announcer. I thought he was actually pretty good in that game.

But beyond Tom Brady, what's been jumping out to you so far, John?

John Ourand (3:19)

Let me say this for Tom Brady. He's letting his personality come out a little bit. Yeah.

And like the oh shit moment. Believe me, because I live in DC. That's how everybody watching that play.

Peter Hamby (3:30)

Oh yeah. I'm not a prude about the language. I mean, when that happened, and he's been injured before and he's been a quarterback, and he was just like, oh shit, that's bad. And we all knew it was bad. It was bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

John Ourand (3:42)

There are three things going on right now with the NFL that I find particularly interesting.

One is Roger Goodell wants to internationalize the game. And so, you know, they started, the first game was in Australia.

This coming Sunday, the Cowboys are going to be down in Brazil. And so they, you're seeing this, this big push. You've seen it for the past couple of years, but you're seeing such a more concentrated push that, you know, before Roger Goodell just signed a contract that keeps him in the NFL into the 2030s, before he leaves, something's going to happen internationally, whether it's a team that gets over there or a game a week that gets pushed over there. It's just something to keep your eyes on. The second thing to pay attention to with the NFL, and I'm curious actually if you've noticed this at all as a fan that's watching games, this emphasis on touch football is something that the NFL is pursuing at a real local level. It's pursuing it at high schools. They're going to be doing something around the Super Bowl with touch. It's going to be a part of the Olympics coming up, but there really is a concentrated effort at the league that I've never seen before, that they think if they start kids young with, because all young kids now they're playing soccer and they're playing basketball. Like very few start out playing tackle football certainly, and they think touch can be, pardon the pun here, but like a touch point for those younger kids to bring them up as NFL fans.