The National Football League has been producing record revenues for the past few seasons, including $9.5 billion just last year. (Chemi)  They have an extremely large target audience, ranging from children all the way to elders. However, over the past month the NFL has found itself in serious trouble with the media.

First it was the infamous video of now ex Baltimore Ravens running back, Ray Rice knocking his fiancé out cold in an elevator, and now there are child abuse allegations against Minnesota Vikings star running back Adrian Peterson.

Adrian Peterson was the recipient of the 2012 NFL MVP award.

Adrian Peterson has been regarded as the best running back in the NFL in recent memory, and as a result many children look up to him as their role model. With children as a key part of the NFL’s segmentation and targeting, this becomes an extremely serious issue. Severe enough that it made long time sponsor Raddisson Hotels drop their partnership with the Minnesota Vikings and the NFL for now, as they take their “long-standing commitment to the protection of children” (Rovell) very seriously.

This story ties into multiple things we learned in class extremely well, as we can talk about the business model canvas, since the NFL has lost one of its partnerships, or we can talk about ethics since parents do not support an organization that has child abusers as their employees, or even about operations, because with this much heat on the NFL, it is more than likely a key management change will come soon.

This story is truly a mixture of all those things, and a fair statement to make at this point is that the NFL better clean up their act soon, because if they don’t, the consequences listed above will damage them even more and will lead to the downfall of their title as the largest professional sports organization in America.

Works Cited:

Chemi, Eric. “If the NFL Were a Real Business.” Bloomberg Business Week. Bloomberg, 12 Sept.           2014. Web. 03 Oct. 2014. <http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-12/if-the-nfl-were-a-real-          business>.

Rovell, Darren. “Radisson Drops Vikings, For now.” ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures, 16 Sept. 2014.           Web. 03 Oct. 2014. <http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/11535104/radisson-suspends-sponsorship-          minnesota-vikings>.