NFL Commissioner Hypes Digital Media

Blogging the National Football League, Blogging the NFL

We’re just a couple days away from the historic first regular-season NFL game played outside of North America. The game between the Miami Dolphins and N.Y. Giants lacks a tremendous amount of excitement with the Dolphins coming in at 0-7. But Commissioner Roger Goodell made some interesting comments about digital media today at “Sport 2020 – The Changing Face of the Global Sports Industry” conference from the Landmark Hotel in London:

“We will connect with more fans globally through digital media. Digital media expands the potential for communicating about our game and with our fans. The Internet is the new town square, a place for fans across the globe to gather and enjoy the NFL. I participated in a session at Google’s headquarters in California earlier this month, appropriately titled ‘Sports of the 21st Century, Sports and Fans – A New Connection.’ We discussed how this is the golden age for the fan. It’s a great time to be a sports fan with more points of contact than ever. It’s a self-service, on-demand environment with fans connecting on their own terms. They can get information when and how they want it. That changes our business model dramatically. Thanks to new technology, we can bring fans closer to football and deepen their interest in the game.”

Personally, I’m getting almost all of my football information online, mostly via the 32 NFL teams’ Media Web sites. And when I’m sitting in the press box at Buffalo Bills games, I still have the NFL.com Game Center on my laptop screen to double check plays, yardages and running stats. And when I venture outside of football as a fan of the NBA or PGA Tour, I look online first. It’s just not as common as it used to be to get last night’s scores in the morning paper. In fact, you probably got last night’s scores … last night.