Interview with NFL Films CFO Barry Wolper

CIO — John Facenda might be the "voice of God" on NFL documentaries, but at NFL Films, the source of top-rated commercials, documentaries and other video programs about football, the CIO listens to CFO Barry Wolper.

A subsidiary of the National Football League, NFL Films has recorded football images since 1962. In 2002, Wolper quarterbacked the budget process for the company’s $50 million, 200,000-square-foot headquarters and production facility in Mount Laurel, N.J. About a year later, the 32 NFL team owners voted to invest $100 million to create the NFL Network—a cable channel to show all football, all the time. The owners turned to NFL Films to oversee construction and operation of another studio in Culver City, Calif. That facility was expanded last year.

As a result of the owners’ decision, NFL Films changed its business model, taking a creative leap from documentaries and commercials into studio shows, cable specials and other programs. In the process, the company has pioneered new tools and techniques for broadcasting sports, such as the use of graphics to analyze game strategy. In order for this to happen, Wolper teamed up with CIO Dave Franza (who reports to Wolper) to deploy a new network infrastructure and applications designed to support current and future programming.

Wolper bankrolled a gigabit Ethernet voice and data backbone that delivers high-speed communications (including voice over IP) between NFL Films headquarters in Mount Laurel and the NFL Network’s Culver City production facility. He also funded enhancements to two systems: a digital video archival system (which stores video clips of all NFL plays from the past 12 seasons) and a broadcast asset management system (a database that indexes completed programs and segments, so production staffs have access to metadata about source material, including total running time and show subjects). The investment has scored big. Wolper declines to share revenue data, but USA Today reported last year that the future pool for revenue sharing among NFL owners, projected at up to $900 million, is expected to come primarily from digital media.

As consumers adopt new communications and entertainment technologies, Wolper says a big challenge for his organization is to keep up with viewer demand. For example, earlier this year, the NFL inked a five-year, $600 million deal with Sprint to deliver programming from the NFL Network on cell phones. "The challenge for us, and especially for our IT folks, is to figure out how to make those links between what consumers want and the ways that they are accessing it," he says.

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