NFL’s Paris Game: A Football Fan’s Nightmare or a Business Decision?
A football family questions the NFL's decision to host a game in a city in turmoil.
The story
TJ Watt's wife, Dani, questions the NFL's decision to hold a game in Paris amid violent riots and safety concerns. The game is scheduled to proceed with heightened security, and NFL officials claim they are working closely with authorities.
Source: brobible.com
Our reading
Dani Watt’s Instagram post is the sports equivalent of a parent asking, ‘Why are we going to a party when the house is on fire?’ The NFL, of course, is not a house. It’s a global brand with a schedule to keep, and apparently, a tolerance for chaos that rivals a toddler at a buffet.
The league’s response is the kind of corporate platitudes that make sense only if you’ve never seen a protest turn into a firestorm. ‘We’re vigilant,’ they say, as if security is a checkbox on a form. But when the form is written in French and the riots are in the streets, what does ‘vigilant’ really mean? It means hiring more guards, maybe, but not necessarily stopping the chaos.
Meanwhile, the Saints players are out enjoying the local scenery, proving that when in Rome—or Paris, or wherever the NFL is playing next—do as the locals do. Except the locals are burning things, and the Saints are sipping wine. It’s a reminder that in the NFL, the real game is not on the field, but in the boardroom, where risk is calculated and safety is a marketing slogan.