O’Reilly oversees the Super Bowl and the draft.getty images
When Denver Broncos President Damani Leech describes his old boss at NFL league headquarters, Peter O’Reilly, he keeps coming back to the idea of balance.
“Peter has so much on his plate he has to trust people, but he still questions his reports on a very detailed level,” Leech said. “His demeanor — he’s always nice guy, but it’s more of a velvet glove wrapped around an iron fist. I’ve seen him in moments where he had to be very tough, and direct. But’s he’s patient and kind.“
That diversity of interpersonal and management skills is at the heart of O’Reilly’s sterling reputation at Park Avenue, and one of the reasons he’s steadily expanded his portfolio to become one of the most important executives under Commissioner Roger Goodell. Officially the NFL’s executive vice president, club business, international and league events, O’Reilly holds broad authority over some of the league’s most intricate operational challenges and important strategic initiatives: The Super Bowl, the draft, international expansion and club business development.
As the NFL looks overseas for its next frontier and considers other big bets on the future, owners will demand that their ambition doesn’t come at the cost of deliberate, precise management. O’Reilly is among that group of leaders they expect to get that right.
Eric Grubman, who managed O’Reilly for four years at the league, said his portfolio today calls on widely varying strengths, a web of high-functioning personal relationships and continual professional development.
“Peter embraced different assignments throughout his NFL career, and that behavior definitely plays to his strengths as a professional because he is versatile,” said Grubman, who now serves as chairman of Betway parent company Super Group. “Moving around also served to inform him — in marketing, events, operating with a P&L … really, really important stuff.”
O’Reilly’s desire and ability to learn new things stands out even at the NFL league offices, known as a pressure cooker that attracts and challenges the sports industry’s highest-flying executives.
5 NFL business leaders to watch
1. Josh Harris, owner, Washington Commanders — Harris is still in the honeymoon phase after his $6.05 billion purchase was approved in late July, and he has plenty of easy business wins still in front of him, such as better ticket sales and redoing the sponsorship sales. But the team’s urgent stadium needs loom.
2. Kevin Warren,CEO, Chicago Bears — The former Big Ten commissioner has much to do in his first full season in this role. The team’s hopes of building a major stadium development in Arlington Heights, Ill., has stalled, with the city of Chicago and other suburbs still holding out hope of jumping in.
3. Terry Pegula, owner, Buffalo Bills — The Bills are building a new stadium and already have big cost overruns. Pegula also restructured the front office this offseason, dismissing former senior executive Ron Raccuia and dissolving the Pegula Sports & Entertainment holding company. Executive VP/COO John Roth now has the reins, with Pegula himself as president.
4. Neal Mohan, CEO, YouTube — Mohan was promoted to CEO at the NFL’s newest media rights sponsor earlier this year, and the debut of the digital “Sunday Ticket” package will carry extraordinary stakes for both YouTube, Mohan’s career and the entire sports livestreaming landscape.
5. Matt Davis, vice president, partnerships, Anheuser-Busch InBev — Bud Light, a sponsor of the league and 26 teams, will be counting on the NFL to help stanch the brand’s precipitous market share decline due to a political boycott.
“In many companies, some people resist that,” Grubman said. “They’re doing well in their thing, and think to themselves ‘I want to get the next promotion right where I am.’ Many people are not capable of doing that. … Moving around means taking some additional risk.”
O’Reilly, 51, cut his football teeth in 1993 as senior manager of the Notre Dame football team that finished No. 2 in the AP poll. He then spent six years at the NBA, where he developed a reputation as an especially bright and motivated worker in the league’s marketing department. He left in 2000 to get his MBA at Harvard, and rejoined sports in 2002 to work on New York City’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics, an unsuccessful effort that nevertheless made a long-term mark on the city’s real estate and sports development.
“He is brilliant and confident, in a really humble way,” recalled Ken Podziba, who was then the city’s sports commissioner. “He’s definitely not cocky.”
To prove New York’s hosting merits, the bid committee and city had to host smaller international competitions, sometimes in niche sports not usually seen as a priority to a city with multiple teams in every major sport. Meanwhile, the rules governing Olympic host bid races were in flux due to anti-bribery reforms coming out of the 2002 Salt Lake City bidding scandal.
“You make one wrong move, and it could kill the bid,” said Podziba, who now heads Bike New York, a nonprofit cycling advocacy group. “Everybody had to understand what the rules of the game were, and abide by them, and just be as aggressive as possible within the rules. And Peter was skillful in that regard.”
If the NFL is able to build out its international vision beyond the handful of special-event games abroad today, those skills will be critically important. Every market is different, and the traits that allow American football to thrive in Germany won’t be the same as the ones needed in Spain or Brazil.
O’Reilly perhaps stands out the most in league circles for his personal popularity. In his role overseeing club business development, he is at the fulcrum of the complex league-team relationship that can quickly go sideways for any number of reasons. The division officially has a cooperative, consultant-like relationship with teams. But as Goodell and leading owners have grown less tolerant of clubs perceived as underachievers, the division has taken on a more prescriptive role at times. Sources say O’Reilly has managed that without becoming the bad guy.
That’s his patient demeanor at work, said Leech, who had been chief operating officer of NFL international before becoming Broncos president. Referring back to his own remark about O’Reilly’s “velvet glove” and “iron fist,” Leech added: “The velvet glove stands out, the iron fist part does not.”
In the 10 years since O’Reilly took on the NFL’s events division, the draft has become the offseason’s biggest event. What had been a routine event with modest audiences in various New York City hotel ballrooms and theaters for 40 years is now a traveling road show that routinely attracts hundreds of thousands of fans to a diverse range of NFL markets.
But during that same period with O’Reilly at the top, insiders note, the Super Bowl has also grown massively and undergone major changes. The year after O’Reilly took over, the NFL spun out its “NFL On Location” hospitality division into what is now On Location Experiences. In 2018, the league abandoned the traditional winner-take-all, arm’s length Super Bowl host bidding races for one-by-one negotiations with host cities.
O’Reilly declined to be interviewed for this article. Several other league veterans also demurred, wanting to avoid being seen as endorsing O’Reilly’s future ascension to commissioner at the expense of other candidates.
That step appears to be at least four or five years away. Goodell, 64, is close to finalizing a contract extension that will keep him atop the league for that long, sources say, and his enthusiasm for the job shows few signs of waning. But on the other hand, there’s no clear No. 2 beneath Goodell and speculation runs rampant about who in the C-suite has the upper hand, with Chief Media and Business Officer Brian Rolapp, Executive Vice President/Football Operations Troy Vincent Sr. and others also occasionally in the debate.
Grubman gives O’Reilly credit for eschewing the me-first career strategizing sometimes seen in elite corporate circles. The idea for On Location predated O’Reilly’s role overseeing the Super Bowl, Grubman said, but he was fully invested in making the concept work by giving the newly freestanding business increased Super Bowl ticket inventory.
“He helped maximized it for the NFL and didn’t fight it,” Grubman said. “And to me that’s a very important attribute of Peter’s. He doesn’t care whose idea it is, as long as it’s a good one, he will help maximize it for the NFL.”
