That’s incorrect (at least in regards to ticket prices). As shown here, the average price for an NFL ticket last year was $76.47; the Packers were just under that average, at $72.36. 16 teams (in other words, half of the league) had a lower average ticket price than the Packers.
brick-I’m a lifelong Pats fan, and we’ve BLOWN for much of my life! IMO, fantasy has RUINED being a football (and sports in general) fan. People watch to see their team PLAY WELL! If the scabs in '87 were any good, people would’ve watched, but obviously they were below average (many were practice squad players and last cuts from camp), THAT’S why fans turned away. (plus disgust with the greed of the people involved)
I had typed out a long, quite snarky, response to brickbacon and Yog Soggoth, but I realized that I was investing too much time with them. I think we just fundamentally see things differently. I don’t see NFL players as having to pay NFL owners, I don’t see that workers have the right to see a privately owned businesses’ financial statements, I don’t see following the agreement and taking money off of revenues to grow the game as being skimming off the top. And I certainly don’t see myself as some kind of whore for the owners. Their mileage may vary. C’est la vie.
9% in capital gains per year and a dividend in the range of .1% is a middling to terrible investment. You can get 4%-5% investing in a Dow Jones or S&P 500 index tracker fund. There isn’t a sole proprietorship in the world that could survive on numbers like that. If typical businesses were to operate on numbers like that your entire city would be nothing but boarded up businesses. Most restaurants and other service industries operate on the order of a 30% margin entirely aside from capital gains.
It’s simply absurd that people villainize the owners for wanting to make the same percentages of operating profit that your average mom and pop establishment on the corner wants to make. It really shouldn’t matter that the scale is different.
It SHOULDN’T, but it DOES! People see people arguing over sums of $ they won’t see in several lifetimes become justifiably angry.
NFL teams don’t even come close to the top 100 family owned companies in the US. The $242 million in revenues that the Packers made isn’t even 25% of the revenues of the 100th rated family owned business made. Yet I don’t hear many people clamoring that workers should be allowed to see the financial decisionmaking of LL Bean.
If that were the argument they’d hate both sides. People that automatically think the owners are the evil ones in the face of facts the contrary have some other bias or grudge.
NFL owners are rich, but compared to the owners of other successful businesses they are relative paupers. The players salaries have grown unreasonably quickly and at some point NFL teams will be upside down just like NBA and MLB teams are. Having a sustainable and profitable business is good for fans and it provides us with good owners, which is pretty important even if people don’t like to admit it.
I’m not sure why baseball keeps getting brought up as this cautionary tale. No baseball team is upside down. All of them, outside of maybe the tigers who’s owner is more than willing to take a loss, make a healthy profit. The strike caused a temporary drop in revenue, but they were back to record revenue within 5 years and have steadily grown since.
Nobody DESERVES anything. It is a negotiation and both sides need each other to be successful.
But you didn’t answer my question. What do you think would get better ratings, real players in generic uniforms or scabs in official ones? Plus, the reason why the scabs were bad is because anyone is relatively bad by comparison to professional players. IF they tried to use scabs today, they would “suck” just as badly.
Bullshit. First, you have no idea what the dividends are. The NFL won’t release their numbers. Second, show me an investment that returns almost 10% a year with dividends that has such little risk, and such good perks. Third, numbers like that would be great for most restaurants and service industries. You are forgetting that all of these teams are profiting, and never have, to my knowledge, ever lost money. Most businesses do lose money at least in the beginning. That profit comes after paying all their employees (often including themselves) and expenses. If I open a restaurant with 1 MM. If I pay all my expenses, employees, myself, AND still have 10k or so left over, I am not doing too bad.
More nonsense. If owning a team is such a bad investment, why do all these wealthy successful presumably smart people want to buy in? Honestly, if they could just go out a make 10% every year without much risk, why sink your money into a football team? Especially if they are going to be vilified by people like me.
Please provide the names of companies in sectors where labor makes up the majority of costs, that have annual revenues after the cost of labor of about 25% of the company’s worth, and basically zero risk of going out of business or losing money over any significant period of time. You keep making these foolish comparisons between the NFL and companies like LL Bean. LL bean doesn’t have any employee that is as integral to their success as Peyton Manning is to the Colts. Companies that do, like hedge funds, Hollywood studios, etc do often have employees that are intimately involved in company financial matters that most workers are not privy to.
If LL Bean told the union representative who was representing 95% of its labor force during negotiations for a new labor contract that they (LL Bean) needed to cut salaries by 10% across the board due to low profits, I damn well would expect the union rep to demand to see the books before agreeing.
95% of it’s labor force? Do you want anyone to take you seriously with a silly number like that?
What pecentage of revenue goes toward labor at LL Bean?
You hear the latest? The NFLPA wants rookies to boycott the draft this year to stick it to the owners. Yeah. That’s who I want representing me. A group that wants me to give up the night I’ve worked my whole life for just so they can “prove a point”.
Fucking dicks.
On a salaries paid basis, I’d be surprised if it were much less than 95%. Who else on a pro sports team makes a lot of money besides the players? The head coach, and the G.M, O.K. The owner certainly. Who else? Are any of the assistants or trainers making even rookie minimum? FromUSA Today’s database of NFL team salaries, the average team total salary is ~100M. (Yes, it’s imperfect: I don’t know if it accounts for pre-paid monies, insurance payouts, etc… Let’s just use $100 million anyway.) Are the front office, excepting the owner, getting paid a total of $5 million a year? 10 at the outside?
Can anyone explain why this latest round of litigation seems to have skipped Judge Doty’s court and ended up in Judge Rogers’s? Given that Judge Rogers is new to many of the issues in the NFL labor controversy, won’t that delay the issuance or denial of the players’ request to enjoin the lockout? As well as delay the owners’ motions to rule that the NFLPA’s decertification was a sham? I’m also wondering how Doty is going to rule concerning the pre-paid T.V. money. I know he ruled the contracts were negotiated in bad faith, and ruled for the players, but I haven’t heard yet what his remedies are going to be.
It seemed to me, and still does, that a lot of the negotiating and strife won’t stop until we get some finality in the litigation, and assigning the latest round to a new judge won’t make the finality come any faster.
They aren’t asking them to give up anything, just asking them not to go to the draft. BFD, the palyers will still get drafted.
2 quick points:
1.The expression “A pox on both their houses”, comes to mind
2.Most people are employees, so they identify with the players.
No you wouldn’t. You’d throw your little hissy-fit strike, quickly agree to terms, and go about your business before your jobs either went away to India or were filled with replacements.
The ONLY thing unique about NFL players is that they are “irreplaceable”, which is a myth because they can be replaced in short order by college players. You know, the usual way of things, the way retiring or cut players are always replaced.
If the NFL decided to break the players they’d tell the college players that they’re holding a draft for all of them, make their picks, and field a team. The colleges might not be happy about it, but that’s too bad. They’ll make up for it in short order. And then the NFL will resemble college football for a year or two until the pros come back (if they’re allowed back after their monumental miscalculation) and the quality of play will be slightly upscale college ball for a few more years. And everybody loves college ball, right? So the NFL loses some money for a few years. Big deal. The fix will more than make up for it in 5 years or so when everybody comes back to it.
See, the thing about negotiations is that the parties are supposed to negotiate. The owners want something, and they’ve to all appearances given concessions in pursuit of what they want. The players don’t want to give anything, and that’s why they’re in court, because they think they can get over. I hope the judge hands the players their asses.
The players conceded a 6% pay cut right off the bat. And if the owners were so colossally stupid as to follow your plan, they’d get their lunch eaten by someone who offered the players 80% of their salaries to start a new league.
And who would that be? Who has a spare $4 billion per year lying around to cover salaries and everything else, not to mention start-up costs? The players would take an even deeper pay cut than they ever imagined in a new league.
If the NFL made moves to do what I said the players would be back in a second. Wait, they’d actually sue first to try to stop it. I forgot, the players “bargain” in the courts.