*By Conor White*
Though last season's 10 percent [drop in ratings](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanberr/2018/08/28/the-nfls-ratings-probably-will-continue-to-decline/#75a6e8dc6666) has stirred questions about the appeal of football broadcasts in the streaming age, the NFL's COO thinks the internet is a useful learning tool for marketing her league.
"What Netflix and Google taught us is that ubiquity and ease are key," the league's chief operating officer Maryann Turcke said in an interview on Cheddar.
"When I think about my own kids, I have a 23-year-old and an 18-year-old; if they can't find something \[quickly\], they're going to stop looking."
Some leagues might be fazed by the rapid rise of eSports, but in certain ways the NFL, which kicks off its season on September 6, has been part of the movement from the beginning ー largely thanks to the success of the Madden franchise of games.
While last weekend's [deadly attack](https://cheddar.com/videos/social-media-livestreams-face-scrutiny-after-jacksonville-shooting) at a qualifying event for the Madden 19 Championship raised concerns over safety at these tournaments, Turcke said the league is poised to take the next step and embrace the eSports craze.
"What Madden did is they brought football into gaming," Turcke said. "I think we need to bring gaming to the broadcast."
"There's a secret sauce out there somewhere, that someone's going to figure out, around how to gamify what we do." she added.
As for the concern about ratings, the NFL's chief media and business officer Brian Rolapp thinks the issue is being exaggerated.
"I think a lot of other people are more worried than we are," he told Cheddar.
While ratings for NFL games are down, [they're also down for everyone else](https://deadspin.com/for-the-last-time-nfl-ratings-are-not-down-theyre-up-1827378925) ー and not just in sports. NBC and CBS both saw viewership fall by 19 percent in 2017, and broadcast networks overall lost 16 percent of their viewers.
"The television industry and media industry is going through some huge changes," Rolapp said. "No one's immune to that."
And live sports ー the NFL, in particular ー are in a better position than most to attract viewers and actually may become more valuable to advertisers in the long run, Rolapp said.
"There is a premium in this marketplace that will continue for any content that can aggregate large number of audiences at one time," Rolapp said. "They are very few, and they are becoming fewer. Live events works, sports works, and the NFL specifically works."
"Whenever you have a product that aggregates audiences, people will find that valuable."
The 2018-19 NFL season officially starts Thursday, when the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles take on the Atlanta Falcons.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/nfl-gears-up-for-another-season).
Luke Wilson is taking a short break from Hollywood. A commercial break. The "Rushmore" and "Old School" actor is starring in his first Super Bowl commercial, and he says the 30-second Colgate spot will probably get more views than any of his movies. "I think more people will see this than any movie I've ever been in for sure," Wilson told Cheddar on Friday.
Draftkings CEO Jason Robins told Cheddar that New Jersey residents alone could wager as much as $100 million on the Super Bowl, the first time sports betting will be legal there for the big game.
Although it has 3 million customers, home security company SimpliSafe isn’t a household name yet. It’s hoping that will change on Sunday after its first Super Bowl ad airs.“In a market where people are trying to lock you in a contract or harvest your data, we’re trying to keep you safe,” brand creative director Wade Devers told Cheddar. “There aren’t really a lot of places you can reach the number of people you can reach like the Super Bowl.”
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Friday, Feb. 1, 2019.
On Super Bowl Sunday, the Hallmark Channel will be home to the sixth annual Kitten Bowl, the annual matchup of cat-letes held to benefit the North Shore Animal League. Beth Stern, host of the Kitten Bowl and spokesperson for North Shore (and wife to Howard), brought a pair of 12-week Siamese kittens to Cheddar Thursday to help promote a new event this year: the first-ever Cat Bowl.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2019.
Super Bowl Sunday is the ー well ー Super Bowl of building brand awareness, particularly for food and beverage companies. This year, Pepsi and Frito-Lay, both units of PepsiCO ($PEP), are once again among the snack giants planning to use the 100 million-plus members of the expected television audience to launch new products and elevate brands in their respective portfolios. Frito-Lay CMO Jen Saenz spoke to Cheddar Tuesday alongside Greg Lyons, the CMO for Pepsi, which is known for its Super Bowl ads and social media engagement tied to the Big Game.
Apple is planning a subscription service that would function like Netflix for games, according to people familiar with the matter. The iPhone maker has also discussed partnering with developers as a publisher, which could signal ambitions to assume distribution and marketing costs for games.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2019.
Following a 2018 Supreme Court ruling year that cleared the way for sports gambling, fans in seven states can bet on the upcoming Super Bowl for the first time ー and leaders in the budding industry are anticipating the Big Game will deliver their biggest day yet. “We expect the Super Bowl to be our single biggest day in the company’s history,” Mike Raffensperger, the chief marketing officer for betting platform FanDuel, told Cheddar.
