For eight years, anyone who has watched any NFL game at some point has seen the word Bose. It was plastered onto every coaching headset in large capital letters, a payoff for the significant payday the NFL has realized from the arrangement.
Terry Lefton of Sports Business Journal reports that Bose is now officially out as a league sponsor.
Lefton previously reported (and PFT confirmed) that Bose would no longer have its company name on the headset. Bose will now entirely end its sponsorship with the league.
Bose followed Motorola, after the league went with the shield on its headsets for a season. The question now becomes which NFL partner ends up in that high-profile space.
Lefton mentions Apple as a potential headset sponsor, especially if Apple purchases the rights to Sunday Ticket. That would make for some awkward conversations between the league and Microsoft, which supplies the league’s ubiquitous sideline tablets (and which sometimes are referred to as iPads).
Whatever the partner, the relationship has real value. Via Lefton, Navigate Research estimates that the headsets are seen, on average, for eight minutes per game.
It’s hard to imagine a non-technology company landing on this very specific piece of technological equipment. But, as always, money drives the bus. If DraftKings or FanDuel or Bud Light or Pizza Hut are willingly to dig deep enough to make the NFL an offer it can’t refuse, the NFL probably wouldn’t refuse it.