One hundred eighty-five million. That’s how many fans the
National Football League reaches any given Sunday. Of the top 10 most viewed
television shows of all time, nine of them are Super Bowls. According to NFL
communications, a single game in 2012 averaged 19.3 million viewers.
Not bad for somebody from a town of 3,400.
Renie
Anderson, the senior VP of business development for the NFL, spent her youth on
a farm in Morganfield, Kentucky. Now she’s making sponsorship deals with some
of America’s largest companies in order to grow the most popular sports league
in America. All while breaking into the traditional boys club that is the NFL.
“I don’t consider myself a female executive. I consider
myself an executive.”
Anderson, one of only a handful or women with a
high-level position in the NFL, got her start in the indoor Arena Football
League as the assistant to then commissioner, David Baker. She worked with the
AFL for eight years. After leaving, she found another job in football in 2006.
This time the games would be played outside, on Sundays.
“I got the opportunity to learn a little bit of
everything about [the business of] sports in the AFL,” she says, “Opportunity
came up and I walked through the door.”
Not far through that door was her current executive
position with the NFL, where she has been ever since. At 38, she’s blazed a
trail from Kentucky to New York, and everywhere in between.
Anderson spent her college years at Ole Miss, training to
become a journalist. She still relies on that training in her current field.
“There’s an element of storytelling in making a pitch
that I just love.”
It seems that she has found a way to utilize her love for
words in her pitches for the NFL, to great success. In no small part due to
Anderson’s involvement, Proctor & Gamble, Pepsi, Bridgestone, and 23 other organizations
are all official sponsors of the NFL. That makes her responsible for a good
chunk of revenue for both the league and its promoters.
It’s not only revenue Anderson is involved with, though.
She has also had a hand in the several initiatives that the NFL strongly
promotes, including the pink cleats and other accessories players don to spread
breast cancer awareness.
“I want to have the ability to do something great,”
Anderson says.
With all that she’s accomplished so far, it seems that
greatness is well within her reach.
WC: 413
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