NFL commissioner Roger Goodell made a total of nearly $128 million via a combination of salary, bonuses and other benefits over the past two fiscal years, The New York Times reported Thursday night.
According to the newspaper, the total was divulged at the just-concluded owners meetings this week in New York City.
Citing four unnamed sources who attended the meetings, the Times reported that Goodell’s significant pay during fiscal years 2019-20 and 2020-21 was about 90% based on bonuses and due to the work he led in helping iron out a new labor deal and a massive media rights package.
In March 2020, by a close 1,019-959 vote, NFL players approved a new collective bargaining agreement with league owners that ensures labor peace through at least 2030 and also cleared the way for a 17-game schedule, which went into effect this season.
In March of this year, the league announced a new set of national television deals, keeping games on ESPN/ABC, Fox, CBS, NBC, Amazon and NFL Network through the 2033 season for reportedly more than $100 billion.
Goodell was elected NFL commissioner in 2006 as Paul Tagliabue’s replacement. He signed a five-year extension in 2017.
Last year, he voluntarily requested to the league’s compensation committee that his salary be reduced to zero due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to an email obtained by ESPN at the time. That request was accepted.
Goodell met with the media Tuesday in New York, where he doubled down on the league’s decision not to make public the results of its investigation into the workplace culture at the Washington Football Team, saying the anonymity of the people who cooperated with the investigation was too high a priority to allow the NFL to do so. A day later, the attorneys for some former WFT employees rejected his reasoning for not making the investigation into the organization public, saying in a letter that their clients wanted anonymity but also a written report.
The NFL paid Goodell nearly $32 million in fiscal year 2015, the last year for which public records exist.
The league declined comment to the Times on its report of his latest payments.
