NEW ORLEANS — The NFL does not expect to negotiate with the players’ union for an 18th regular-season game until it starts collective bargaining talks, commissioner Roger Goodell told reporters during his annual Super Bowl press conference Monday, suggesting an expansion of the schedule is more than just a few years away. 

The current NFL collective bargaining agreement doesn’t expire until 2031, but that does not preclude the league and union from amending the agreement, something recent reports have said could happen. But Goodell, seated in front of the Super Bowl LIX helmets of the Chiefs and Eagles, placed talks for an 18th game in the context of fully formed labor talks.

Asked by moderator Curt Menefee whether Goodell had a deadline for adding an 18th regular-season game, the commissioner replied, “Those things, Curt, they come up in the context of the broader CBA issues. I don’t think you isolate one of those issues over any others. It will be part of the formal discussions when we get to it.”

Global Expansion, DEI, and Future Plans

Goodell also put a qualifier on the chance of an international Super Bowl. After expressing optimism about the prospects in October, he said Monday it would happen only if it was in the city of a new franchise. Of course, if the NFL ever did expand internationally, it almost goes without saying the new club, or clubs, would vie to host a Super Bowl.

The commissioner, questioned about his dedication to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the wake of the sharp political turn against these programs, particularly by the Trump Administration, offered a vigorous defense and said the NFL is better with DEI. “There are no quotas in our system,” he said.

Goodell confirmed the league would consider selling an international-only package of games to a media outlet, whether a streamer or linear television. The NFL aims to have 16 overseas games annually and will stage about half that many next season. And he said the league in the offseason could look again at the terms of Tom Brady’s role as part-owner of the Raiders and Fox NFL broadcaster.

Goodell also revealed the NFL is considering starting professional men’s and women’s flag football leagues. Flag football, which is an Olympic sport in 2028, is a big focus of the NFL because it allows more women to play a version of the sport and adds another avenue to become fans of the NFL.

Monday’s Media night at the Superdome delivered its cacophonous maelstrom as advertised, but none of it seemed to bother Eagles owner Jeff Lurie. For over an hour, he sat on a chair atop the turf his team will play on in five days and spoke to reporters. It was tough to hear, and the scrum was largely made up of Philly reporters peppering Lurie with football questions.  But he did make some business news by describing himself as uninterested in buying the for-sale Boston Celtics, a team he had been rumored to want.

“I’m not really interested in acquiring another sports team,” he said. “I think it’s connected because, you know, they’re, they were my childhood team.”

I wouldn’t exactly describe the following as a stadium controversy, but he said the lease on Lincoln Financial Field expires in 2032, and the team will need to either renovate or build a new stadium.

“We’re starting to talk all about it and think about what our options are,” he said. Add the Eagles to the list of stadium-covetous teams.

A reporter asked him about portrayals of the Chiefs and Eagles as villains, which seemed to confuse Lurie.

“I don’t see it that way,” he said. “I just see it as two extremely well-coached, talented teams that have made it this far as two years ago, and it’s phenomenal for the NFL. And there’s no—I don’t find there’s a villain aspect.”

During the first Trump administration, many teams declined to make the trip, including the 2018 Super Bowl champion Eagles. However, the Florida Panthers visited the White House earlier on Monday.

With that in mind, I asked Lurie: if he wins Sunday, will the team go to the White House? Lurie laughed and started walking away, before turning and adding that he’s only focused on Sunday.

The potential of Super Bowl LIX posting a banner, and perhaps a historic, viewership number has increased following another methodology change by Nielsen.

The measurement agency said Monday it has expanded its coverage of the contiguous U.S. with its out-of-home analytics from 66% of the country as of last year to 100%. Harder-to-reach, rural areas have seen increased adoption of wearable devices on Nielsen’s persons panel, in turn fueling a fuller counting of television viewership. 

“The communal power of TV is undeniable and with this out-of-home expansion, we can more accurately provide the industry with the most complete picture of the viewing audience,” said Nielsen CEO Karthik Rao.

Nielsen originally introduced out-of-home measurement in 2020. As expected, it has since helped to solidify sports as a critical driver for the entire TV industry—due in no small part to substantial group viewing of live games in settings such as bars, restaurants, hotels, and transit hubs. 

This is the second major expansion for Nielsen in the last month, as the agency also recently gained full accreditation for its Big Data + Panel ratings, which adds data from sources such as set-top boxes and smart TVs to the company’s usual panel-based measurement. 

Game Watching 

The expanded metrics will be included in ratings for Sunday’s Super Bowl LIX, which is chasing the U.S. television record of 123.4 million set last year. 

That push could have something of an uphill climb given the potential of “Chiefs fatigue” as the team goes for its third straight title, as well as due to audience declines seen throughout the NFL regular season and playoffs. 

Separately, Nielsen has struck a multiyear audience measurement deal with CBS Sports parent Paramount, with the agreement providing a full range of viewership analytics across the company’s broadcast, cable, and streaming properties.

Less than a year after the Ippei Mizuhara and Tucupita Marcano scandals rocked MLB, the sport has had a major gambling issue arise once more, as the league has fired umpire Pat Hoberg for sharing betting accounts with a friend who bet actively on the sport. 

Hoberg was fired after a roughly year-long investigation, including an appeal of an initial termination decision, which found he shared betting accounts with a professional poker player, and also intentionally deleted messages that were central to the probe into his conduct. MLB did not find any activity that Hoberg himself bet on baseball or manipulated the outcomes of games, and he also stridently denies any such activity. 

The league, however, still concluded Hoberg failed to “uphold the integrity of the game.”

“His extremely poor judgment … creates at minimum the appearance of impropriety that warrants imposing the most severe discipline,” said MLB commissioner Rob Manfred.

Hoberg can apply for reinstatement upon the start of spring training in 2026. He has been an MLB umpire since 2014, full-time since 2017, and widely regarded as one of the league’s best. Computer tracking even determined Hoberg had an “umpire’s perfect game” during Game 2 of the 2022 World Series, correctly calling balls and strikes on all 129 taken pitches. 

“I apologize to Major League Baseball and the entire baseball community for my mistakes,” Hoberg said. “I vow to learn from them and to be a better version of myself.”

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The Hoberg firing represents the third major incidence of gambling-related violations in MLB since last spring. Mizuhara, the former interpreter and friend of Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani, was found to have stolen more than $16 million from the phenom to fund his gambling addiction. He pleaded guilty to bank and tax fraud last June and is now awaiting sentencing.

Marcano was banned for life in June after investigators found that he placed hundreds of bets on MLB games while in the minor leagues. 

Across the industry, however, match-fixing continues to drop, thanks in part to improved monitoring and advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence to flag betting anomalies.