Lords of the Realm

Posted by on Tuesday, September 16, 2014 in National Football League.

Interview with Washington Post.

Roger Goodell is the paid enabler for the 32 lords of the NFL realm. To give this expendable front man credit for NFL’s revenue growth would be like giving the rooster credit for dawn.

Art Modell once said that NFL owners are a bunch of fat cat Republicans who vote socialist on football. The League’s revenue growth is the result of a critical tension between two opposing forces.  New luxury venues and mega-media are the two counteractive drivers in NFL revenue revolution that began well before Roger Goodell. The NFL has naturally coevolved with the media revolution since the league-think philosophy Pete Rozelle. The venue revolution polarizes the league because venue revenue is not shared, whereas the media revolution solidifies the league because it is shared equally.  The League is a fully diversified legalized cartel money machine that runs on monopoly autopilot.

Both revenue revolutions are based upon classic monopoly cartel behavior of charging one-half as many NFL fans more than twice as much. NFL media rights have been progressively siphoned from free-to-air to cable to satellite, and new venues have progressively replaced shared gate revenue with unshared revenue from exclusive luxury suites and corporate club seats. This might be why NBA (M)maverick owner Mark Cuban predicted that the “greedy” NFL would implode within 10 years, while the League has predicted own revenues of $25 billion by 2027.

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