Roger Goodell’s current contract runs out in March 2027, when he’ll be 68 years old. The owners aren’t waiting around to see what happens after that. According to four people familiar with the owners’ views, the NFL expects to finalize a contract extension with its commissioner in the coming months — not because the man is beloved, but because there’s a mountain of television money and a labor fight coming, and nobody else is lined up to sit in that chair.
The deal isn’t done yet. There’s no signed paper, no press conference, no ratification vote scheduled. But there are also no known stumbling blocks. No owner has surfaced in opposition. Even Jerry Jones — who fought a Goodell extension in 2017 — has stayed quiet this time. The negotiations have moved along so quietly that The Athletic reported in May 2025 that an extension was set for approval that very day, then walked it back. Whatever happened there, the owners’ confidence hasn’t budged. One person with knowledge of the owners’ thinking called the extension “critical.” Another said the confidence level is high.
The timing could line up with the owners’ regularly scheduled October meeting in New York. Goodell’s last extension — a three-year deal completed in October 2023 — was announced during an October owners’ meeting in Manhattan. Before that, there’s a special Aug. 26 meeting in Atlanta, but that one’s reserved for a ratification vote on the $9.612 billion sale of the Seahawks from Paul Allen’s estate to a group led by the Khosla family. That’s a 59 percent jump over the $6.05 billion Josh Harris paid for the Commanders in 2023. The franchise valuations alone tell you why the owners want the guy who keeps inflating the balloon to stick around for the next round of broadcast negotiations.
Those negotiations are the whole point. The NFL’s current media rights deals, finalized in 2021, are worth more than $110 billion over 11 years — and the league can opt out early. The NBA and WNBA just landed packages worth roughly $76 billion over 11 years, and the NFL pulls significantly larger audiences. Translation: the next round of NFL broadcast deals could make the current ones look like a garage sale. You don’t hand that negotiation to a rookie.
Then there’s the CBA. The current labor agreement runs through the 2030 season and explicitly bars the league from unilaterally adding regular-season games. Some owners once hoped for an 18-game season as early as 2027. That timeline has slipped. The NFLPA’s former executive director, Lloyd Howell, acknowledged informal discussions about an 18th game before resigning in July 2025 amid a string of controversies. David White served as interim director until player reps elected JC Tretter in March. Formal CBA negotiations haven’t started.
If Goodell signs another three-year extension, he’d be 71 when it expires — and the owners would be staring at a succession question they’ve been ducking for years. The late Jim Irsay once floated splitting the job into a business CEO and a football-operations commissioner. Nobody picked up the idea with any urgency. Goodell himself said in 2023 that he didn’t know when he’d retire: “We’ll see what the future holds. I don’t know. We’ll see.”
Goodell has been commissioner since 2006. He gets booed every year at the draft. He presided over Spygate, Deflategate, Bountygate, and the Ray Rice disciplinary mess. He also presided over the league’s transformation into a $110-billion-media-rights, international-game-playing, franchise-value-doubling enterprise. The owners aren’t extending him because he’s popular. They’re extending him because the pie keeps getting bigger and he’s the one holding the knife.
The NFL declined to comment. Goodell’s salary is no longer publicly disclosed — the league office gave up its tax-exempt status, so the compensation figures went dark. His 2023 extension didn’t even require a formal owner vote; the compensation committee had been authorized to negotiate it directly.
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