Equating revenue to a strong fan base shows a lack of understanding of basic finance. 
There are many sources of increased revenue for an NFL ball club other than selling more logo caps. Sometimes, all it takes is having enough well-heeled suckers with large amounts of money to spend. Like, oh, lobbyists, and lawyers, and other similar types, of which Washington, D.C. is crawling. :eek:
That must be why the Nationals are raking in the dough, eh?
FedEx Field is 12 years old, making it about the average age of NFL stadia. Strong local sponsorship deals wouldn’t happen without strong fan support.
I will agree that they’re in a major market, though as DSYoungEsq himself noted, the NFL has cut into their revenue base twice in the last 15 years with the Ravens and Panthers.
Anyway, all of this is totally beside the point, which is not why the Redskins make a ton of money but that they make a ton of money, and thus can afford to pay coaches and free agents tons of money.
Isn’t sales of merchandise equally split between the 32 teams anyway?
Not all of it. The NFL makes (ie., licenses) identical-except-for-colors-and-logos stuff for all 32 teams, and the revenue from those items (which include jerseys) is shared. However, teams are free to produce their own branded items and sell those as well. Basically, proceeds from anything you can buy with Team X’s logo on it at NFLshop.com are shared.
Proceeds from anything (other than bootleg stuff, obviously) you can buy with Team X’s logo on it that is not sold at NFLshop.com is non-shared.
ETA: although the shared-revenue merchandise obviously accounts for the majority of NFL branded product sales, the other stuff is not insignificant. I read a while ago that the Cowboys sell more non-shared merchandise than shared merchandise if you don’t count hats and jerseys.
I’ve never disputed the statement that the Redskins have plenty of money. That’s quite clear. It’s the equation of that with fan base that I dispute.
But money alone does not a winning team make. There are endless examples of this disconnect. It does, however, help, and I do agree that the existence of money in the pockets of the Redskins is good reason to expect a more regularly competitive team.
Btw, the [del]Senators[/del] Nationals play in the summer. You ever been in D.C. in the summer? 
The Nationals actually seem to be doing ok. According to this, they are the worth $460 million (13th among all teams).
While I agree with almost everything mentioned thus far about the Skins, it should be noted that they play in what has been (for several years) one of the toughest divisions in the NFL. That alone will cut your chances of success.
Here’s my take on the situation:
Dan Snyder is the owner, and somebody named Vinny Cerrato is the GM. For whatever reason, Snyder has a huge personal loyalty to Cerrato (my guess here, since his name is “Vinny” is that there could be some mob money involved when Snyder purchased the team.)
Snyder, obviously, has no idea what he’s doing although it does appear that he plays fantasy football once in a while. However, that’s not unusual in the NFL, which is why they have GM’s. If Cerrato, the GM, knows nothing about football, then your team is in BIG BIG trouble.
Out of the top 4 teams this season (Colts, Saints, Broncos, and last year’s champs, the Steelers,) two of them built their teams from the draft (Steelers and Colts have nearly 100% of their current stars from the draft,) and the other two built them off shrewd trades and FA’s (Denver getting Orton and Champ Bailey and the Saints getting Shockey and Brees.) Teams in the second tier have also had some success either in the draft, trades, or FA’s.
The 'Skins, however, have shown failure after failure in every aspect of these, for the past 5 years. What’s really pathetic to me is that they constantly pick up lazy players in contract years (the only year they work hard), give them massive contracts, and then those players do nothing and they wonder why.
It seems to me, the way the 'Skins are run, is that whoever’s in charge has football knowledge based on fantasy football and Super Techmo Bowl.
I thought up an Onion Headline today:
“Redskins somehow defeated on their bye week.”
I had a long post that got lost, but it essentially said what Superhal said. Snyder and Cerrato are clueless and refuse to take heed of any of the successful NFL franchises have done to build their teams. They’ve managed to evade a great deal of blame because there is typically someone doing a much worse job (see: Al Davis, the Ford family). Up until recently there have been enough stars and decent coaching in DC to cover up the smell.
But the aging, patchwork offensive line has more or less broken down completely. We honestly can’t assess Jason Campbell’s worth because they can’t stop anybody. Keep in mind the pantheon of Redskins QBs includes Kilmer, Jurgensen, Theismann, Schroeder, Rypien, and Williams. None of these guys were Manning-esque in their QB play. But they had excellent supporting casts and through the 80s, the Hogs.
The free agent debacles have been chronicled already. The coaching choices - two were good ones, and two were not. Schottenheimer is a steady, albeit unsexy coach. He wasn’t going to get more out of the roster than they were worth, but he’d get that at least, 8-9 wins and a peek at the playoffs. Joe Gibbs (was) a god among Skins faithful and it seemed like a good move at the time. The OBC (Spurrier) was clearly unready for head coaching in the NFL, and Jim Zorn, though seemingly a nice guy, is out of his depth.
Hell, the way this staff was assembled was a joke. Management decided to hire their own choices for coordinators and then the HC. No self-respecting HC would come on board to lead someone else’s staff, and of course they ended up having to bump Zorn up, even though he wasn’t their first choice.
Two catastrophic fuck ups: not hiring Marvin Lewis and Gregg Williams as head coaches. Both were fantastic defensive coordinators with great success. But the Snyder/Cerrato nexus prefers the long ball, and they let these guys go elsewhere and have success.
And of course, Tony Dungy’s tenure in Indy ought to show that having a defensive-minded head coach doesn’t prevent you from having a fireworks offense.