As shared on TLDR by Wealthsimple newsletter, Jan 26, 2026.
In 2013, New York Times reporter Ken Belson was approached by his editor with an idea: did he want to cover the National Football League on a full-time basis — not as a sport in the traditional sense but as a business story? Belson agreed, and more than a decade later, he poured everything he learned into a book, Every Day Is Sunday: How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell Turned the NFL Into a Cultural & Economic Juggernaut. Over the decade-plus Belson spent reporting, the average NFL franchise more than tripled in value, from US$1.7 billion to around US$7.65 billion today. The audience, meanwhile, is bigger than ever; last year, a record 127.7 million viewers tuned in to the Super Bowl.
With this year’s Super Bowl coming up on February 8, we talked with Belson about the league’s relationship with Canada and how the NFL just keeps growing.
Let’s start with the Super Bowl. How did it become the giant spectacle it is today?
The first Super Bowl, in 1967, was comically inept. The official game clock broke. NBC didn’t come back from commercial [break] and missed the second-half kickoff. But over time, it became a party — and a bucket-list destination. And not just with fans but also with corporate sponsors. Another reason the Super Bowl has grown is that the NFL has tried to expand its appeal to younger fans, women, and Hispanic fans, by, for example, having Bad Bunny play the halftime show this year.
The book traces the growth of the NFL over the tenure of Roger Goodell, the commissioner since 2006. What’s his basic approach?
He’s turned the NFL into a giant media company, into Hollywood. [See: NFL RedZone, its mega-successful seven-hour Sundays-only survey of league-wide action.] One of his associates told me Roger doesn’t really look at the NBA or MLB as competition; he wants the NFL to be seen in the same light as Disney or the Vatican. Disney, of course, is a family-friendly media conglomerate, and the Vatican is a cultural institution. That’s where Roger’s head is at.
You write about the NFL’s eagerness to move into international markets but its hesitancy to actually do it. Is that the Canadian story?
The Bills played a series of games in Toronto starting in 2008 at the Rogers Centre [home of the Blue Jays], but, frankly, the games were kind of panned. So the Bills backed off, and now they’re about to open a new stadium in Buffalo. [As far as expansion teams go], the owners love the number of teams right now, 32. They love the balance of 16 teams in each conference. Not to mention that every time you add a team, you dilute the equity of the existing owners [who share revenue from national TV contracts].
But you also write about the NFL not wanting to sit back and be happy with where they are.
That’s very much their mantra. But they’ve realized that if you’re going to expand internationally, the cheapest way to do it is to sell the game on TV. That’s why you’ll see the Seahawks marketing their brand more in British Columbia.
Will we at least get more games in Canada at some point?
I think we’ll eventually see more games in Toronto, but the league has gotten more discriminating about what they demand from their host cities in terms of facilities. And I don’t know if the Rogers Centre is suited to host the NFL right now.
This interview, conducted by Michael Weinreb, was edited for length and clarity.