SBJ Football: Sony, Verizon to share NFL headsets under proposal

NFL owners are expected to vote at their annual meeting next week on an unusual deal that would return corporate branding to coaches’ headsets for the first time since Bose walked away two seasons ago, sources tell SBJ.

The issue is on an agenda circulated earlier this week, but it could face some challenges getting approved or even yanked from the agenda altogether.

Under the deal, two brands would share the rights to the NFL’s biggest vacant asset: Sony and current 5G and tech sponsor Verizon. The exact contours of that collaboration are still up in the air, but we understand Verizon would get headset branding at league-owned events (such as the Super Bowl) and Sony gets the regular season.

Along with the unusual nature of the deal, Verizon would encroach on team-level sponsorships with competitors at four clubs with owners/execs that hold a lot of sway -- the Cowboys and Falcons (AT&T), Chiefs (T-Mobile) and Packers (U.S. Cellular). To be clear, sideline sponsorship assets such as headsets and mobile tablets are league property, but the idea of Mike McCarthy wearing a Verizon headset at the Super Bowl may not sit well with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and his friends at AT&T, which is title sponsor for the stadium in Arlington.

Also, the very definition of “league owned events” is a potential issue -- what about conference championship games? Those are league events, but in five of the last six years, the AFC title tilt has been in Kansas City, where T-Mobile has exclusive rights. Teams have been assured that kind of situation will be managed, but that’s just one sign of the potential challenges.

Sony has not been especially active in sports sponsorship outside of its native Japan in recent memory, but it did have a broad consumer electronics sponsorship with the NFL in the 1990s. A return to the league would give its line of headsets, already among the market leaders, an immediate visibility boost. As of last season, electronics retailer Best Buy was an NFL sponsor, creating an easy path to retail activation.

For Verizon, the deal would add a branding component to its existing role in facilitating coach-to-coach communications in every stadium, part of its 10-year extension signed in 2021. Before Bose, the headsets sported Motorola and Sprint branding.

In 2023, Navigate research estimated coaches’ headset TV exposure at more than eight minutes per game, which equates to a media value of $72 million. It’s not known what the total combined value of this deal would be, or what other assets could be included.

Owners are expected to approve an ownership title change at the Texans when they meet. The team wants to make Chair and CEO Cal McNair the principal owner instead of his mother, Janice McNair, sources said. The move comes one month after Janice’s other son, Cary, backed down from his lawsuit seeking to have her ruled legally incapacitated and install a guardian over her affairs.

The change does not include any financial transaction. Since founding owner Bob McNair died in 2018, his controlling interest in the Texans has been owned by a family trust as permitted under a 2015 change in NFL rules. Under the terms of the McNair trust, the trust appoints a principal owner (with NFL approval) who is entitled to act with autonomy regarding league matters. Janice, Cal, Cary and two sisters sit on the trust’s board of directors.

Since Bob McNair’s death, Janice, 87, has been the principal owner, while Cal has served as day-to-day head of the organization. Neither Cal’s title of chair and CEO, nor Janice’s title of co-founder and senior chair, will change.

This move appears designed to shore up succession issues, though it’s not precisely clear how this move relates -- or not -- to Cary’s abandoned legal challenge or other, private intrafamily conversations now occurring. There’s no specific reason to believe the Texans would leave the McNair family, but league insiders, investment bankers and sports-minded billionaires are watching closely -- an aging matriarch, trust ownership and disagreements among siblings are all the right ingredients for a sale.

Last June,  I wrote about football entrepreneur Brian Woods’ idea to build the Prep Super League, an organization for high school football players to boost their NIL value and scholarship prospects outside the purview of state athletic associations. He targeted an April 2024 launch, and we hadn’t heard much lately, so I wanted to see where things stood.

Woods says he expects 400 players to participate this year (his original vision, a plan of 12 50-player teams , called for 600). Also, he may put some markets on the back burner, with hopes of bringing them along next season. But in 2024, he said: “By no means will we be less than 8-10 teams.”

Also, he’s swapped Phoenix for Las Vegas on the list of markets (Denver replaced Cleveland when PSL sold a franchise to Colorado’s Upswing Foundation.) The season will run five weeks instead of six, starting April 27 instead of April 20. Woods is still working on the schedule. They’ll run in a centralized hub system, with all games being in either Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, L.A. or Las Vegas.

Strategically, a key issue for the PSL is when states will permit high school students to do NIL deals -- without that legislation, participants in those states would have to choose between high school eligibility and the PSL. Most states do, but Texas and Florida do not. Woods expects Florida NIL legislation to come this spring, but Texas has an unclear path. “We can’t have a national high school league without Texas, just because of the immense talent that comes out of that state,” he said, but he notes recruitment has still been reasonably good there. Woods is putting stock in a proposed creation of a June signing period for college prospects , which he thinks could lead high school juniors to use the PSL as their “senior season.”

• Is it a leak when the owner posts on Reddit under his own name? On Monday, somebody leaked an unauthorized picture of a new Houston Texans uniform. The uniform is real, but it’s an unflattering image. So a bit later, team chair/CEO Cal McNair logged on and posted a more polished picture of the same look under his own username. McNair’s gambit worked- the official image is far more prominent than the unauthorized one on a Google search.

• The Cardinals went to market this week with an array of 538 premium seats, 10 “casita”-style suites and two clubs, all on the underutilized field level at State Farm Stadium. The changes are expected to be ready for the 2024 season.

• The Dolphins made three SVP hires in the C-suite, adding Pri Shumate as CMO, Ged Tarpey as CCO and Jason Green as chief ticketing officer.

• A Netflix docuseries, “Receiver,” acts as a follow up to its hit series “Quarterback” and features Raiders WR Davante Adams, Vikings WR Justin Jefferson, 49ers TE George Kittle, 49ers WR Deebo Samuel and Lions WR Amon-Ra St. Brown, reports SBJ's Erik Bacharach.

• In this week's magazine, my colleague Bret McCormick details how the Bills are rounding up concepts for bison statues at the future Highmark Stadium.

• McCormick also reports that the Broncos introduced Club 1977, a new premium space on the stadium’s north side that pays homage to the team’s dominant Orange Crush defenses of the late 1970s. Club 1977 was created by combining two suites into one 1,670-square-foot space -- which cost close to a million dollars to build and was designed by DLR Group and built by Turner.

• League of the Year: NFL
• Deal of the Year: Josh Harris-led group acquires Commanders.
• Facility of the Year: Allegiant Stadium, Gillette Stadium and SoFi Stadium.
• Team of the Year: Chiefs
• Executive of the Year: Josh Harris (Commanders, Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment)