Elizabeth and Caroline Blackburn are off to a roaring start in Cincinnati as their family works to turn the Bengals into the one of the kings of the NFL jungle.

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Elizabeth and Caroline Blackburn are off to a roaring start in Cincinnati as their family works to turn its franchise into the one of the kings of the NFL jungle

The 2020 offseason was a momentous time for the Cincinnati Bengals. With their first three draft picks, the team selected quarterback Joe Burrow, wide receiver Tee Higgins and linebacker Logan Wilson. All three would play pivotal roles in changing the direction of the franchise and helping the Bengals reach the Super Bowl in February 2022 for the first time in 33 years.

Behind the scenes on the business side, two other promising faces were arriving around the same time. In February 2020, Elizabeth Blackburn, the then-27-year-old granddaughter of owner Mike Brown, formally joined the family business as director of strategy and engagement. Fourteen months later, her younger sister Caroline did as well, as senior manager of digital strategy.

Sports business insiders took notice. Within months, word spread that the Bengals, traditionally known for Brown's fiscal conservatism and low profile in one of the league's smallest markets, were getting bolder, thinking bigger and moving faster. While the older generations — the sisters’ parents, Katie and Troy, and of course their grandfather — are still running the team, Elizabeth and Caroline have become a symbol of the team's ambitions and its youth movement. In doing so, they hope to show what new ideas and perfect timing can do to transform a modern sports property.

With a superstar in Burrow under center, the Bengals have won consecutive division titles for the first time in 40 years and just the second time in franchise history, and their five postseason wins in the last two seasons match the total the franchise had prior to his arrival. They’re coming off a season in which they filled Paycor Stadium to 101% capacity, the first completely sold-out season since 2007. They’re a television draw too — scheduled this season to play twice on both "Sunday Night Football" and "Monday Night Football" for the second straight year.

This has been the perfect time, in other words, for the organization to accelerate its business initiatives. In the last three years, the Bengals have sold the naming rights to Paul Brown Stadium; built an indoor practice facility (and sold rights there too); dramatically expanded their digital content team; and adopted some of the buzziest new uniforms in sports, including the monochrome "white Bengal tiger" fit. The younger Blackburns are known to have played key roles in most of those major initiatives.

The next step this offseason has been to make key C-suite hires. In April, Lacy Ekert was brought over from BSE Global to become the Bengals’ first chief partnership officer, and longtime marketer Brian Sells was promoted to a newly created chief business officer role. Both new titles embody the team's hopes of turning the Bengals into a national and international brand while this once-in-a-generation collection of on-field talent is in its prime.

"We’re living in Cincinnati, so we feel and see the excitement every day," Elizabeth Blackburn said. "We think it's extremely exciting, but we think there's an opportunity to tell more people, more brands and more executives what's going on, and start to share that excitement and energy outside of this market."

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As the great-grandchildren of Paul Brown, football has always been a part of the sisters’ lives, especially for Elizabeth, who was born during the second half of a Bengals comeback win over the Jets at the Meadowlands in 1992. As children, the young sisters moved into the dorms and shagged loose balls at Bengals training camp in Georgetown, Ky. As young professionals, they were roommates in New York City, where they would talk often about their visions for the team, including how — and even if — they would return to the family business.

"We never wanted to come back only because it was our family's thing," said Caroline. "We kind of made a pact with each other: We’re not coming back unless there's a clear role for us to advance the business."

Once they arrived, their mother recalls being impressed by how quickly both her daughters settled in. "From the day they got here, they were really comfortable doing things that required leadership and initiative, and interacting with others in the office," Katie Blackburn said. "They’ve just had complete comfort in doing that and doing that in a really impressive way that helped get things done."

Elizabeth insists the new generation isn't taking the franchise in a dramatically different direction than her grandfather or mother have — they are simply aligning the business side with their clients and a world-class football team.

Take, for example, the 16-year stadium naming-rights deal signed last August with Paycor, a payroll software maker, that came 22 years after the stadium first opened. Before it went through, the Bengals were one of just three NFL teams (along with the Bears and Packers) that didn't have a naming-rights deal for their stadium or field. Many NFL experts interpreted that move as a big strategic shift, a conservative franchise being forced to become more aggressive on revenue in light of the pressure to re-sign Burrow and his young fellow Pro Bowlers. But Elizabeth downplays that theory, instead calling it "enhancement and opportunistic timing" and "strategic alignment" — sounding very much like the Bain & Co. and KKR associate she once was.

Those experiences for Elizabeth came on the heels of a degree from Dartmouth and a turn in the NFL's junior rotational program. Caroline graduated from Duke before embarking on a career in e-commerce strategy for Walmart then Petco.

For the NFL, which was built on old-money mainstays like the Rooneys, Maras and Browns, its future growth will require a more corporate and business-centric entrepreneurism. In Brown's granddaughters, the league may have both. As Renie Anderson, the NFL's chief revenue officer who first got to know Elizabeth during her turn in the junior rotational program, said of her, she "has outside perspective with some inside heart."

All NFL clubs are profitable, and when winning, any of them can marshal their vocal, local fans to sell out a stadium. But the Bengals and the Blackburns now have their eyes set on more rarified air — that top tier of NFL clubs whose fans occupy every sports bar in the country, and many overseas. Those teams (the Dallas Cowboys, Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers, to name three) have economic power that is seemingly untethered to their market's limitations or their team's record, enabling them to set everything from tickets to sponsorships at higher prices and approach a far wider range of buyers.

Bringing the Bengals to the ranks of NFL business royalty will take time, and growth may be limited in a market that ranks 22nd in population among NFL cities, according to the Census Bureau. Last year, Forbes ranked Cincinnati as the least valuable NFL franchise, worth an estimated $3 billion, 25% less than the median team and less than half the Giants, Patriots, Rams and Cowboys.

The Bengals rank 24th out of 32 in combined Facebook, Instagram and Twitter followers, according to SBJ Atlas. Before their AFC Championship and narrow loss to the Rams in Super Bowl LVI, the Bengals’ attendance hadn't finished in the top half of the NFL by percentage of capacity since 2009, in most years ranking in the bottom quarter of the league.

Much of that is because the pre-Burrow Bengals were easy to ignore. In the 31 seasons between their last-minute loss to San Francisco in Super Bowl XXIII and the drafting of Burrow, the Bengals won roughly 41% of their regular-season games and lost all seven of their playoff games. They were never a top-tier draw for NFL broadcasters; in the 15 seasons from the start of the 2006 media rights deals through 2020, the Bengals made just 20 appearances combined on NBC's "Sunday Night Football" and ESPN's "Monday Night Football," ranking in the bottom third of the league for both nights.

But things are moving in a hurry. The Bengals are now a featured team in national TV windows. In 2022, they were scheduled for five prime-time games (though one was flexed out and another, against Buffalo, was canceled after Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest on the field). In 2023, they’re scheduled for four prime-time games and three more in featured late-afternoon windows. There are other signs of their emerging popularity: They’ve expanded their self-identified fan base by 121% since 2018 and now claim the largest national fan base among all Ohio pro sports teams, according to internal survey data. In the 12-month period ending in January 2023, the Bengals led the NFL in overall social engagement, and have expanded their social following by 74% across all platforms since 2019.

It's common for sports franchises to see big revenue and popularity gains when they’re winning with marketable players, but the goal is to leverage the boom into a better position for the long term. Ekert said she thinks the Bengals resemble an NBA team that accomplished exactly that. "I likened it to where the Golden State Warriors were in 2012, 2013, they were building a young nucleus of a team that's very similar to what's happening here," she said.

It's a bold, if imperfect, comparison. With new ownership coming in a few years earlier, the previously low-profile Warriors expertly leveraged an all-time collection of talent to win three NBA titles in four years from 2015-18, setting up a move into the lucrative new Chase Center, where they won another title in 2022. In a decade's time, the team became a dynasty and an international brand that regularly topped the NBA in revenue by large margins. But the San Francisco Bay Area dwarfs southwestern Ohio and northern Kentucky in both wealth and population, and Brown is widely understood to be among the least wealthy NFL owners.

Still, the shared media revenue is growing rapidly and has long ensured that the NFL does not have the competitive imbalance other leagues do. And as for market size, Ekert and the Blackburns believe that's not the barrier it once was.

"I don't think it matters anymore," Ekert said. "I think what's on the field and how teams are operating, and that the fan base believes in you and believes in the organization, I think that tells you what you need to know."

That test will come with Ekert's first target categories: alcohol and automobiles, two places the organization believes it can rapidly raise revenue. In alcohol, they expect to sign multiple new deals in spirits and wine after relying on beer and mixed cocktails to date (Molson Coors, ABInBev, Canvus cocktails). In autos, the Bengals have long-running local deals with Toyota and Kia, but hope to find a tier-one national brand, and a luxury brand sponsor.

The evolution from regional team to national brand could take decades. But Bengals brass point to evidence that it's already happening. Google says the Bengals were the most-searched-for NFL team in 2022, and Burrow was the third-most-searched-for athlete. Even the city's signature food is catching on: The second-most searched for recipe of 2022 on Google was "Cincinnati chili," no doubt fueled by the Bengals’ Super Bowl run.

"That's another example of the power sports teams have to put cities on the map, to put different parts of our community on the map, and we’re excited to feel that energy here and we’re very confident and bullish that we can get that energy nationwide and globally too," Caroline Blackburn said.

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The Bengals are prone to understatement with their job titles. Mike Brown is simply listed as "president," and Katie Blackburn is "executive vice president." So it should come as no surprise that the sisters are playing a bigger role than their business cards might suggest. Indeed, the Bengals believe elevating their younger ownership family members is a strategic advantage. They know that young millennials and Gen Z fans value robust, clever online content that has a bit of an edge — just like the players themselves.

Steve LaCroix, the former CMO of the Minnesota Vikings, agreed that teams can reach further and quicker for fan growth than they used to, at least across the U.S.

"Because of the rise and continued growth of social and digital media — and it seems like the Bengals have embraced that as an organization — that can certainly resonate across different demographic groups and physical markets," he said. "From a national perspective that thought process resonates."

LaCroix said expectations should be more tempered internationally, however, noting American football's limited popularity outside North America.

Those younger fans also appreciate a spectacular, outsized event experience — forcing the Bengals to raise the stakes for game day. Here too the sisters’ perspective and experience proved invaluable. The Bengals dubbed their upper deck seats under an overhang "The Canopy Crazies" section because Elizabeth was so impressed by the Cameron Crazies when she visited Caroline at Duke.

"Colleges are oftentimes the model we look at because there is an energy there, truly tied to the sport," Caroline said.

Elizabeth agreed, adding, "We want our stadium to be the best experience in the NFL."

She has already made that a point of emphasis during her tenure. In 2021 as fans came back from the pandemic, Elizabeth ushered in a series of changes to game-day programming, including concession discounts for season-ticket holders, a "Ruler of the Jungle" pregame hype ritual, a "Jungle Zone" pregame fan gathering space, a Ring of Honor to celebrate the franchise's most legendary players, fireworks after touchdowns and better player introductions.

In a recent, leaguewide "Voice of the Fan" survey, Cincinnati was No. 1 in the NFL for fans agreeing with the statement "I feel valued as a season-ticket member."

"She [Elizabeth] in particular has put a real focus on what the experience is like for the GA season-ticket member, and you see that in the data," said NFL Executive Vice President Peter O’Reilly. "She's got this curious and inquisitive mind that really wants to get into: ‘What do the fans want? What can we do?’ It really comes through in the way she asks questions and thinks differently."

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The Bengals’ grand business ambitions are rooted in their remaining an annual contender, and now more than ever that means having an elite quarterback who can take advantage of the game's infatuation with pass-happy schemes.

Flush with cash from the new media deals, owners will have more money than ever to spend on the game's most important players, many of whom have been rewarded with eye-popping contracts just since Burrow joined the league. In fact, the five richest QB deals have come in the last 16 months — including $52 million annually for Lamar Jackson in Baltimore and $46 million for Deshaun Watson in Cleveland, both AFC North rivals that have yet to take their teams to the Super Bowl. Even more stressing than the annual value is the increasing pattern of large, long-term guarantees ($230 million for Watson; $135 million for Jackson; and $110 million for the Eagles’ Jalen Hurts), which owners are generally required to put in escrow upfront.

Burrow's four-year, $36.2 million rookie contract expires after the 2024 season, and while he has suggested he is open to a hometown discount, speculation has begun over just how high his next deal will be — and if it will be in Cincinnati.

Other areas of the organization will require an infusion of capital. The Blackburns promise continued new hires in many divisions to match their ambitions, including in social and digital content, and sponsorship and premium sales and service. And despite the opening of the 80,000-square-foot IEL Indoor Facility last October, the other facilities need upgrading. The Bengals and Hamilton County are deep in the early phases of a renovation plan for Paycor Stadium, though the sisters mostly declined to discuss details. This spring, an NFLPA member survey rated the Bengals No. 27 out of 32 for how players are treated, getting dinged badly because "facilities and resources offered are ranked far below average."

"We do need to stay competitive on the business side," Elizabeth said.

The Blackburns figure to be in Cincinnati long after the Burrow era has concluded. One sign of their emerging influence around the NFL came last year, when Commissioner Roger Goodell appointed Elizabeth to the international committee, making her the youngest member of a league committee.

Kevin Demoff, chief operating officer of the Rams and a savvy observer of league politics, said of the younger Blackburns, "the more time you spend with them, the more impressed you are. The Bengals are in really good hands."

The NFL is a win-now-or-else pressure cooker for most of its players and employees, but ownership heirs with hopes of becoming an internationally-known brand can afford the perspective of the long haul. "Caroline and I are pretty patient in taking the long view on this," said Elizabeth Blackburn. "And with Brian's new position and Lacy's hire, these are planting seeds for the next decade-plus to come."

The many unanswered questions after an historic day in sports business.

SBJ I Factor presented by Allied Sports features an interview with Danita Johnson, president of business operations for D.C. United and a member of Sports Business Journal's Forty Under 40 class of 2023. Johnson talks with SBJ's Abe Madkour about learning how to sell and to not fear change, becoming an effective manager, the importance of empathy as a leadership trait, and what to look for when evaluating job candidates. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine's awards, such as Forty Under 40, Game Changers and others.

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