Nobody Has the Big Papa Johns/NFL Story Covered Like Darren Rovell
This is how you do Journalism. This is the difference between Barstool and ESPN’s Sports Business Reporter. 330 million Americans saw the report that Papa Johns was no longer the Official Pizza of the NFL [TM] and went about their humdrum lives. Clem wrote a funny blog about Pizza Hut taking Papa John’s place and moved onto other, less mundane topics.
But not Darren Rovell. He knew there was more to the story. That it went much, much deeper. There were layers he could explore. Other angles from which to look at it. Questions to be asked. Who’s Papa John’s ad firm? Who’s their PR firm? Are they good? Does Papa John’s sponsor individual teams? Will they continue to? How’s their stock doing? How many franchises do they have? What about their competition? And how does this news affect the man in the Twitter streets?
That’s how you become the preeminent Sports Business Reporter on the globe with over 2 million followers. By hearing the most boring news item of 2018 and seeing it as an opportunity to do the modern equivalent of an old movie where the reporter bursts through his editor’s door yelling “Stop the presses, Chief! I got a story that’s gonna set this town on it’s ear!” Cue the spinning headlines montage. So thanks, Darren. Next time a mass producer of shitty pizza backs out of a business deal with a sports organization, we’ll all know who the go-to guy is for news, cutting edge analysis and opinion polls.