Pete Rozelle was the NFL commissioner from 1960 to 1989 who is largely credited with developing the modern economic model for professional sports leagues. He convinced owners to share television revenue equally to promote competitive balance. Rozelle also pioneered public relations and marketing efforts like developing the Super Bowl into a premier television event and creating Monday Night Football. Through revenue sharing and media strategies, Rozelle increased the NFL's brand awareness, fostered its image, and transformed the league's brand for long term fan loyalty and financial success.

1. Pete Rozelle: Developing and
Communicating the Sports Brand
The International Journal of Sports
Communication by John A. Fortunato
A paper by Chris Ostrow

2. Who is Pete Rozelle?
• The Sporting News magazine most powerful
person in sports for the 20th century. Rozelle
was the former NFL commissioner of the NFL
from 1960 to 1989. He was elected to the Hall
of Fame in 1985. He was largely given credit
as the visionary for developing the economic
model for professional sports leagues.

3. • Time Magazine recognized Rozelle as one of
“the builders and titans of the 20th century.”
• Voted Number one on the Sporting News’s list
of the most powerful people in sports for the
twentieth century.

4. What Did Rozelle do for the NFL?
• It was Rozelle’s idea to sell the league’s television
broadcast rights as a collective entity to the
highest bidding network, then have all teams
share that revenue equally to help ensure
competitive balance.
• In addition to developing an economic model
that improved the brand quality of the
NFL, Rozelle should be recognized as a pioneer in
applying branding principles to the sports
industry.

5. Main Focus
• The following information I will provide to you in
this presentation will illustrate how Rozelle
defined the current sports brand as more than a
game, but included many strategic
communication initiatives.
• Rozelle increased the NFL’s brand awareness and
fostered its brand image, thus increasing the
league’s brand equity and ultimately fan loyalty.
• Rozelle’s actions helped transform the NFL and
continue to influence the entire sports industry
as we know it today.

6. Brand Quality
• Rozelle understood for a sports league to thrive it
needed competitive balance with every team being
equipped with the same economic tools and fans in
every city believing that it’s team, if managed properly
could win a championship. He convinced owners to
share revenues of television.
• This revenue sharing policy that helped ensure league
wide competitive balance and enabled the NFL to
grow. This equal sharing of national television
contracts is now the standard economic business
model for all major sports league.

7. • Prior to Rozelle no other sports commissioner
had based so much emphasis on public
relations and marketing.
• Pete was instrumental in developing the Super
Bowl and transforming it into the premier
television event.
• In addition with his belief that football would
be a huge success in prime time, he co-
created the revolutionary idea of Monday
Night Football.
• Rozelle expanded the league from 12 to 28
teams.

8. • In the 64-65 regular season Rozelle used a
purse bid system. Where each network would
submit its best bid in a sealed envelope and
then all bids would be revealed and the
highest bidding network would be awarded
the contract.
• CBS Won the bid with $ 28.2 million an
increase of $365,000 per year they had been
earning. This guaranteed no team would lose
money.

9. Brand Awareness
• The biggest promotional communication vehicle
of the NFL brand resulted from the merger
agreement of the NFL and AFL in 1966 Super
Bowl. Previously the Super Bowl was at the NFL
team’s home stadium. He also wanted two
weeks between each league’s championship to
build up the game in the media.
• Today the Super Bowl is the greatest spectacle in
American Sports. Super Bowl 42 was the second
most watched program in television history, with
97.5 viewers.

10. • Rozelle shopped the idea of a prime time
package of NFL games to CBS and NBC, but
neither wanted to preempt their succesful
prime time lineups. This opened up the door
for Roone Arledge to take the gamble and air
prime time games on ABC. The first Monday
Night Football Game was played between the
Jets and the Browns in 1969

11. • It was also Rozelle’s idea to work with ESPN in
getting the network to revise the NFL draft.
Rozelle understood the promotional value of
the draft in introducing the player coming into
the league and wanted to create excitement
for the fans. In 2007 the NFL draft had an
average rating of 5.0 over the first four and a
half hours of ESPN’s broadcast of the event

12. Brand Image
• Rozelle developed several initiatives to foster the
NFL’s image. He helped foster ideas such as NFL
charities, NFL Films, and the creation of the NFL
Hall of Fame. He also moved NFL offices to New
York to be closer to enable better contacts with
pivotal television and corporate sponsor
executives. Ahead of his time Rozelle
implemented plans to internationalize the NFL.
Today following his lead in understanding the
value of television with the creation the NFL
Network in 2003.

13. Conclusion
• I think that Rozelle’s idea of making the game
not just a game was brilliant. He really
captured the idea of Spectator Services such
as the contest, the spectacle and the third
place as in chapter 1 of the textbook.
• I think as sports managers it is important to
recognize the importance of Rozelle as a
pioneer and defined the current sports brand
that we know today.