NFL Properties

• 1. Introduction

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  NFL Properties sits quietly behind one of the most recognizable brands in American sport, running the business of logos, jerseys, and licensed merchandise that most fans never think twice about. Founded in 1963 as a subsidiary of the National Football League, it was built to keep tight control over the league's brand and those of every franchise it represents. Its head office is in New York City, and from there it negotiates with vendors, issues licenses, and decides who gets to put an NFL logo on a product. The questions worth asking are: how did a modest licensing office shape everything from video games to comic books, and what happens when its decisions end up before the United States Supreme Court?

• 2. The Mascot Experiment

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  In the early 1990s, NFL Properties launched a line of mascot-like characters called Team NFL Heroes, pitching them mainly at children and teenagers. The merchandise range was wide: stuffed dolls, school supplies, t-shirts, and lamps all carried the characters' likenesses. Costumes were built for each character, and people wearing those suits appeared at the 1995 Pro Bowl. Most of the Team NFL Heroes characters lasted only a season or two before disappearing. A handful survived because individual teams formally adopted them. New England Patriots mascot Pat Patriot and Denver Broncos mascot Miles both found permanent homes through that route.

  The strangest entry in the program belonged to the Green Bay Packers. Their Team NFL Heroes character was a polar bear named Bayer. The name worked on two levels: it is a homonym of 'bear', and it echoes the word 'Greenbayer', which means a citizen of Green Bay, Wisconsin. The irony the name left unaddressed was that the Packers' long-standing arch rivals are the Chicago Bears. A bear mascot representing a team defined partly by its hatred of another team called the Bears was the kind of detail NFL Properties apparently decided to run with anyway.

• 3. Marvel and NFL SuperPro

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  NFL Properties branched into comic books when Marvel Comics created NFL SuperPro in the early 1990s. The reception was not warm. Critics panned both the character and the comic book widely, and only twelve issues were ever printed before the series ended. The NFL also used a SuperPro mascot at some events to promote the character, suggesting there was genuine ambition behind the project even as the comics themselves struggled. Twelve issues is a short run by almost any measure, and the series has since become a well-known example of a licensed comic that failed to find an audience.

• 4. Electric Football to Madden

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  Long before the video game industry existed, NFL Properties was already licensing physical games. In 1967, the league licensed Electric Football, which was produced by Tudor Games. Decades later, as home consoles became mainstream, NFL-licensed video games multiplied across multiple platforms. Early titles included NFL Pro League Football by Micro Sports Inc., 10-Yard Fight, and the Tecmo Bowl series for the NES. The most enduring series is Madden, named after former coach and commentator John Madden, which has been released annually since 1988.

  The competitive landscape changed sharply in December 2004, when Electronic Arts signed a five-year exclusive agreement with the NFL. Under that deal, only Electronic Arts could publish games featuring NFL team and player names. The effect on competitors was immediate. Midway Games, unable to use official NFL branding, released a game in 2005 called Blitz: The League, built around fictitious teams and players. In February 2008, EA Sports extended its exclusivity agreement with the league through Super Bowl XLVII in 2013. As of October 2015, The Sporting News reported that it was not publicly known when, or if, that contract would end.

• 5. The Supreme Court Case

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  Former supplier American Needle, Inc. took NFL Properties to court over antitrust violations, targeting the practice of granting an exclusive license to a single supplier for a given product category. The central legal question was whether the NFL and its franchises should be treated as a single entity or as separate competitors in the merchandising market. Court decisions varied as the case worked through the legal system. It ultimately reached the United States Supreme Court, making NFL Properties the subject of one of the more significant antitrust cases in sports business history. The outcome turned on how courts define competition between member clubs of a sports league when their shared licensing revenue is at stake.