Fans watch from their seats at Levi’s Stadium before the San Francisco 49ers played the Denver Broncos in an NFL preseason football game in Santa Clara, Calif. In the not-too-distant future, a football fan might be able to take his seat at the stadium, punch up any game he wants on the monitor set in the seatback in front of him, keep tabs on the real-time stats of his fantasy team, order up a hot dog and beer and even have a brand-new jacket brought to his seat if the wind kicks up.In the not-too-distant future, a football fan might be able to take a seat at the stadium, punch up any game on a seatback monitor, keep tabs on the real-time stats of a fantasy team, order up a hot dog and beer and even have a brand-new jacket brought to the seat if the wind kicks up.
This is the future of the NFL – the $9 billion league that kicked off the 2014 season this week and has plans on going bigger over the next decade.
Agent Leigh Steinberg, who foresaw the TV explosion that bankrolled the NFL into the 21st century, views the stadium-as-marketplace concept as one of the natural and soon-to-come investments the league can make en route to making its next $9 billion.
Commissioner Roger Goodell is thinking even bigger – on record as saying he wants to grow the NFL into a $25 billion business by 2027.
Here are some places those billions could come from: