I have seen a lot of tragedies in my three decades covering this sport. I was in the building for the tuck rule. I was on the tarmac when the Colts sneaked out of Baltimore in the dead of night. But I have never seen anything quite as devastating as what I witnessed this week on the streets of Paris, where a beautiful, pristine promotional pop-up tent was callously boarded up just because an entire nation decided to go on strike.
The NFL House was supposed to be a sanctuary. It was a place where Parisians could escape the dreary realities of European life and experience the majesty of a temporary structure selling $160 branded keychains. Instead, the league office was forced to shutter the activation ahead of massive street protests. Storefronts are covered in plywood. Riot police are marching down the boulevards. And somewhere in a crate, a life-sized cardboard cutout of Patrick Mahomes sits in total darkness, unseen by the people who need him most.
I flew all the way to Charles de Gaulle on Wednesday, fully prepared to evaluate how the international consumer responds to interactive field-goal kicking simulators. I had a credential. I had an itinerary. I had a scheduled sit-down with a former backup tight end who was going to teach French schoolchildren how to properly hydrate. Now, I am trapped in a Marriott, watching plumes of tear gas waft past my window, wondering why the French working class hates the growth of the game.
And don't even get me started on the police presence. You'd think with thousands of heavily armed riot officers flooding the streets, they could have set up a decent perimeter around the NFL House to ensure VIPs could still access the complimentary charcuterie board. Instead, the authorities were completely focused on public safety and preventing the collapse of the metropolitan infrastructure. It is exactly that kind of soft, defensive play-calling that prevents true greatness. If you have the personnel, you blitz the gap and you protect the pop-up shop.
Back in my day, if you wanted to riot, you did it for a reason that mattered. You flipped a police car because your franchise won a championship, or you burned a couch because your head coach punted on fourth-and-short in the fourth quarter. You didn't paralyze a major metropolitan center over pension reform or the cost of living. That is just a complete lack of focus. You can't teach that kind of misplaced priority.
These protesters are out there marching shoulder-to-shoulder, completely oblivious to the fact that they are disrupting a vital corporate footprint. Do they not realize the logistics involved in shipping a replica Lombardi Trophy across the Atlantic? Do they not care about the countless hours PR associates spent coordinating lighting gels for the photo wall?
I watched the evacuation of the NFL House from a café across the street. Let me tell you, it takes real intangibles to abandon a branded merchandise stall that quickly. I saw marketing coordinators sprinting to black SUVs with the sheer explosive burst of a young edge rusher. I saw a vice president of synergistic partnerships stiff-arm a waiter to get to his waiting town car. It was gritty. It was survival.
It is frankly disgusting that these citizens would put their systemic economic grievances ahead of our Q3 European engagement metrics.
Brent is absolutely right. I had a long conversation with him at an owners' meeting last spring, and we both agreed that the only thing holding back international expansion is the sheer selfishness of the local populaces. They just refuse to buy in. You look at the French labor unions, and you see a group of guys who are entirely focused on themselves. They aren’t playing for the logo on the front of the jersey. In fact, they are actively setting fire to the jersey.
I tried to reach out to the local authorities, assuming Mayor Anne Hidalgo would be issuing a formal apology to the shield for allowing her city to fail so spectacularly on the global stage. I expected a press conference. I expected accountability.
We understand the closure is disappointing to the American media, but the city is currently paralyzed by mass demonstrations regarding the fundamental survival of our citizens.
Exactly. The fundamental survival of our citizens. That is exactly the kind of excuse you hear from a franchise that lacks accountability. When the going gets tough, they point fingers at external factors like wages and starvation instead of looking in the mirror and asking what they can do to facilitate a seamless retail experience for out-of-town guests.
The sheer disrespect for the shield is what really galls me. The NFL didn't have to come to Paris. They could have taken this pop-up to London, or Frankfurt, or anywhere else where the populace understands that their primary civic duty is to consume content. But they chose France. They extended an olive branch in the form of interactive passing drills and a branded DJ booth. And how does Paris repay them? With barricades and demands for a living wage.
I am not a political analyst, but I know football, and I know how you handle a labor dispute. You lock them out, you bring in replacement workers to operate the trains and bake the baguettes, and you break the union. You don't just board up your promotional pop-up and cower in the face of a collective bargaining agreement. You impose your will.
It is a shame that the fans are the ones who suffer here. Somewhere in this city, there is a young boy who just wanted to pay forty-five euros to measure his vertical leap against a digital tape measure. Because of these protesters, that boy’s dream is dead.
I am scheduled to fly back to the States tomorrow, assuming the air traffic controllers don't decide to selfishly prioritize their own human rights over my departure time. I’ll leave Paris with a heavy heart. I look out at the barricades burning in the twilight, and I can't help but think it's a wasted opportunity. If they had just slapped a DraftKings logo on that dumpster fire, we could have at least monetized the chaos.