Ben Gilbert

That always makes me think of Thanksgiving.

It makes me think of, I think it was a Jock Jams tape that I bought.

Welcome to this special remastered edition of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them.

I'm Ben Gilbert.

I'm David Rosenthal.

And we are your hosts.

Three years ago, in January of 2023, we released an episode on the National Football League, which, David, I think is absolutely an essential part of Acquired canon.

But, listeners, a few things have happened since then.

One, the NFL has become even more of a juggernaut.

Two, Acquired's audience grew a lot, so many of you never heard that episode.

And three, the ultimate Acquired universe crossover happened between the NFL and Taylor Swift.

Yes, we are.

Listeners, details on how and when you can watch that are in the show notes.

So to help us come up to speed and prepare for that, and to help you get pumped for the Super Bowl, we decided to remaster our NFL episode to today's acquired production quality standards.

We also decided to update the episode with everything that has changed about the league from streaming on YouTube and Netflix and Amazon and all those deals to our updated thinking on the international strategy for the NFL and, of course, how the influx of gambling being legalized has affected the league.

Yes.

We're going to put all of these updates in a special new section right at the end of the episode.

So listeners, it is time to throw it over to myself from 2023 and onto our remastered episode of the National Football League.

Football is America's favorite sport, by far.

In fact, football is more than three times as popular as the next highest sport, basketball.