Reporters Roundtable: Examining the Most Important Storylines Ahead of the NFL’s 2025-26 Season

Wednesday, August 27 | 12:30 PM ET

Reporters Roundtable: Examining the Most Important Storylines Ahead of the NFL’s 2025-26 Season

In this SBJ Live episode, SBJ’s Ben Fischer moderates a reporters roundtable with Ken Belson of The New York Times and Randall Williams of Bloomberg. Together, they’ll examine the most important storylines shaping the upcoming NFL season—from the league’s deals with ESPN to international expansion to a new wave of stadium development and evolving fan expectations.

What we will discuss:

• NFL’s international ambitions and potential new markets
• The NFL’s deals with ESPN and other media properties
• Sustainability of franchise valuations
• Stadium construction and renovations, from Buffalo to Kanas City
• Broadening and ever-increasing sponsorship revenue

Who should attend:

• NFL team and league executives
• Media and broadcast professionals
• Sports marketers and sponsorship leaders
• Stadium and venue operators

Featured Speakers:

Ken Belson: I rejoined The Times’s Business section in 2023 to write about the business of sports after spending 14 years in the Sports department, primarily covering the N.F.L. I also worked in the Metro section for three years writing about New York City transportation, economics and energy. From 2004 to 2006 I was a business reporter covering media and telecommunications, and from 2001 to 2004 I covered the Japanese economy from Tokyo.

In 2011, I was part of a team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for coverage of the Japanese tsunami and the nuclear disaster in Fukushima.

Before joining The Times, I wrote for Bloomberg, Reuters and Business Week in Tokyo.

I attended Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism on a Japan-America Friendship Commission Fellowship. I won the Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship, which I used to travel to the Cook Islands to write about what happens when a country goes bankrupt.

I live with my wife in New York, where we enjoy listening to jazz, taking long walks and rooting for the Mets, not necessarily in that order.

Randall Williams, U.S. Sports Business Reporter, Bloomberg

Registration is free. All registrants will receive a recording of the webinar following the event.

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