The NFL still can’t shy away from using the Kansas City Chiefs as its cash cow
The Chiefs’ schedule is all the rage this week, but that’s been true for a while now, in case you haven’t yet noticed.
But of course you have, because, well, the NFL shoves it into the mainstream for the better part of a week.
We learned this year’s Chiefs will have full-time occupancy of the holiday seasons — Christmas and Thanksgiving. But they occupied darn nearly every day of the calendar week a year ago. And it was two seasons ago that when coach Andy Reid was asked about an aspect of the schedule — in this case, the playing surfaces — he replied with this quip:
“We’ll go play in the CVS parking lot.”
Careful.
Is there money to be made in that?
The NFL is using the Chiefs as its ultimate carrot once more, dangling them on the prime-time and streaming market in return for millions. You can almost picture it, a league executive sliding a sheet of paper across the table and a network producer unfolding it to read two scribbled words: “Patrick Mahomes.”
It’s whenever, wherever, as long as it follows the money, and the point here is that once again — even after a Super Bowl loss — the money is still following the Kansas City Chiefs.
They will open the year in Brazil, the first game played in front of a (free) YouTube streaming audience, and there’s no doubt the Chiefs’ presence in the game against the Chargers allowed the league to seek a higher asking price for its rights. They will play on Christmas night in Kansas City, because, again, the sticker price of a Rolls-Royce beats a Ford Fusion.
And the Dallas Cowboys have the pleasure of hosting America’s Team — err, the World’s Team — on Thanksgiving Day in a game in which the league is no doubt attempting to break a viewership record.
There are eight standalone games in all, including five night games in the initial eight weeks for the first time in NFL history — slots in which the league has wiped the calendar clear but for one feature act:
The Chiefs.
The Eagles took the Lombardi Trophy in February, but they could not take the Chiefs’ aura with it.
It’s not a consolation prize. It is a statement from the league.
For all of the accomplishments — the three Super Bowls this era, the first dynasty in two decades, the individual accolades — the example of a freaking schedule release speaks to the entirety of the moment.
One of America’s most booming businesses is selling rights holders on the team from little ol’ Kansas City.
How about that?
It’s remarkable, at least to those of us here for Scott Pioli, Todd Haley and not one but a pair of 2-14 seasons in a five-year stretch. The organization now atop the money mountain once lost 26 games in a two-year span from 2008-09. It’s lost just 26 in the last seven.
It’s more than an improbable story.
It’s a reminder.
The league isn’t propping up the Chiefs because of any affections. It’s not even about what they think. It’s about what they know everybody else thinks.
The Chiefs are Super Bowl losers, but their golden-goose moniker has long-term staying power.
To TV executives, sure, but to the rest of the league.
Days before the Super Bowl in New Orleans, Chiefs general manager Brett Veach described how every game provides the feeling of the opposition licking its chops. This is my addition to what he said, but think of it: As the Chiefs are playing on national TV for the third week in a row — or, say, the fifth time in the initial eight weeks — it can’t help but become monotonous. But it offers a vast audience for insert-opponent-here as they try to beat the Chiefs.
“It’s a little hard emotionally to sustain that for 17 weeks,” Veach said. “That’s the thing I think is special about this team.”
Those week-to-week emotions aren’t going anywhere, because the Chiefs aren’t going anywhere.
The Eagles will have their share of moments in the spotlight, and others too, but it’s still the Chiefs who will be plastered into prime-audience windows more than anyone and more than ever.
That emotional sustainability is a real side effect of a long season for a team that has been to five of the past six Super Bowls. It’s difficult to feel the bounce from every regular season game. The effect is visible. The post-game locker room celebrations provide just a fraction of the energy they once did.
Which is why I’ll close here with a point I made about last season’s first two weeks.
The Chiefs’ brutal stretch to start the season — a trip to Brazil to face the Chargers (a playoff team last year) before a return home for a Super Bowl rematch with the Eagles — ought to be viewed as a pretty good thing.
They’d have to play each of them regardless. The order in which they do shouldn’t technically matter, but that bounce is where it might matter.
A trip to Brazil to face a worthy division rival, followed by a home date with the team that just kicked their rear-ends ought to provide a reminder of the difficulty of a long stretch before they need the reminder. They won’t have a problem getting ready for those games.
They got that reminder early last year, too, opening with the Baltimore Ravens. A one-score win propelled them to a 9-0 start.
They were perfect in record, even if imperfect in the performance along the way. But in each game’s must-have moments, they performed just as the NFL still views them.
They were money.
This story was originally published May 15, 2025 at 7:00 AM.