Anthony Noto was the top media and entertainment analyst at Goldman Sachs before becoming the NFL’s CFO in Jan. 2008. Noto joined me this morning, in his first television appearance since taking the job, to talk about the state of the league as the season starts tonight in Pittsburgh.
On growth of the game: “We’re continuing to see strong year over year growth in all key fan engagement methods building on the strong success of the Super Bowl in 2008, which had a record audience of 152 million viewers. We’re continuing to see that growth strongly in audience ratings as it relates to preseason games that are up over 20 percent. The NFL Network’s ratings on a year-to-date basis are also up in the double-digit range.”
On revenues: “On the economic front, clearly the environment has hurt discretionary spending and that has had a negative impact on ticket sales as well as sponsorship and advertising. So our forecast for revenue is lower than we thought a year ago, which still should grow about mid single digits year-over-year.