Trump appealed directly to NFL owners by asking the crowd: “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!'” And he directly encouraged fans to walk out of games when a player protests during the anthem: “If you see it, even if it’s one player, leave the stadium, I guarantee things will stop.”
The first team owners to respond were John Mara and Steve Tisch of the New York Giants: in a statement on Saturday, they called Trump’s comments “inappropriate, offensive and divisive.” More owners have followed. At the league level, the NFL released a statement in which Commissioner Roger Goodell called the comments “divisive” and said they “demonstrate a lack of respect for the NFL, our great game and all of our players.”
Trump discussing the NFL, and player protests, in Huntsville, Alabama, on Sept. 22, 2017.
The NFL is estimated to bring in an all-time-high $14 billion in revenue this year, and more than $1.25 billion of its revenue last year came from fees that official league sponsors pay to be associated with football at the highest relationship level.
Who are the “official sponsors” of the NFL? This season, it’s: Anheuser-Busch InBev; Barclays; Bose; Bridgestone; Campbell’s; Castrol; Dannon; DMI; EA Sports; Extreme Networks; FedEx; Ford; Frito-Lay (PepsiCo-owned); Gatorade (PepsiCo-owned); Hyundai; Intel; Marriott; Mars; McDonald’s; Microsoft; Nationwide; New Era; News America; Nike; Papa John’s; PepsiCo; Procter & Gamble; Quaker; Sirius XM; Ticketmaster; Under Armour; USAA; Verizon; Visa; and Zebra.
Will these brands take a side in this latest battle of words: President Trump vs the NFL?
Chris Lucas and Preston Brust of the band LOCASH performed at a Pepsi NFL Kickoff event on Sept. 9, 2017 in Leesburg, Virginia. (Getty Images for Pepsi)
Some brands may say something, but don’t expect them to say very much. And don’t expect any to shrink in any way from their relationship with the league.
That’s because, in the words of Wasserman managing partner Elizabeth Lindsey, who works with brands like these on their NFL sponsorships, “Football is football… a phenomenon, a juggernaut… It’ll always continue to garner attention from the marketers, primarily because it garners that much attention from the fans.”
For past examples, look at how league sponsors responded when the NFL was under fire in 2014 for its handling of the domestic violence case against running back Ray Rice. Many issued statements expressing outrage, but none did more than a delicate PR move.
AB InBev said it was, “disappointed and increasingly concerned by the recent incidents that have overshadowed this NFL season” and was, “not yet satisfied with the league’s handling of behaviors that so clearly go against our own company culture and moral code.” PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi said she was, “deeply disturbed” by “the repugnant behavior of a few players and the NFL’s acknowledged mishandling of these issues.”
Three years later, AB InBev and Pepsi are still proud league sponsors.
That tweet perfectly hedges, attempting to please both the people offended by player protests and the people offended by Trump’s criticisms of the player protests. The company “stands by the flag and by our athletes.” The statement appears to take a strong stand, while actually saying nothing.
In the days to come, as news outlets dissect the fallout, and pro athletes send out tweets, look for NFL sponsors to either do nothing or issue a careful, walking-on-eggshells statement.
Daniel Roberts is the sports business writer at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite. Sportsbook is our sports business video and podcast series.
