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Very long article and worth the read. A lot of good information.
NFL's revenue gap could drive more relocation
Brent Schrotenboer, USA TODAY April 18, 2017
The gap between rich and poor teams in the NFL has gotten so wide in recent years that three of the underprivileged franchises have taken drastic action:
In the past 15 months, the St. Louis Rams, San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders all decided to leave their home markets and move to cities that offered better stadiums and more local revenue potential.
By 2030, several more of the NFL’s low-revenue teams might face the same pressure: Do they risk shrinking financial margins as costs go up for all teams with rising player salaries? Or do they relocate to where they can better keep up with teams that have bigger markets or better stadiums?
That is the big issue boiling under the hot pot of NFL relocation, from the viewpoint of low-revenue teams, said Troy Blackburn, vice president of the small-market Cincinnati Bengals.
The revenue disparity between teams is “the largest it’s ever been in NFL history,” Blackburn told USA TODAY Sports. Even though teams equally share the revenues of NFL television contracts and a portion of ticket sales, they don't share other local stadium revenues with each other, leading to the rising gap.
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Tension over the revenue disparity isn’t new, and this is not the first time the Bengals have spoken out about it. Mike Brown has been a leading voice about what he sees as structural financial imbalance in the NFL. On the other side of the spectrum, some owners have not been very sympathetic to this argument. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones even previously suggested the low-revenue teams need to be more aggressive chasing dollars.
“The big concern I have is not how to equalize the disparity in revenue but how to get the clubs that are not generating the revenue to see the light,” Jones said in The Wall Street Journal in 2004.
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Not all small or big markets are the same. Big market and small market in this context also sometimes is used to mean the haves and have-nots: teams that are making big money because of big markets or lucrative stadiums, versus those that are not.
“You’re always going to have a bottom eight, but if you keep enhancing the bottom eight, and you change them out, that means everyone’s doing better,” said Marc Ganis, a sports consultant who works with NFL owners and helped the Rams and Raiders relocate from Los Angeles in 1995.
The difference this time is the widening of the gap, the rising costs for all teams and how to “change out” the bottom eight without having them consider more relocation, which is bad for loyal NFL customers in abandoned markets.
Much of the league's revenue is shared equally among 32 teams, recently at around $225 million each. But the disparity has grown because of the revenues that teams are not required to share with each other – local dollars that are kept by the team that earns them, including highly lucrative stadium suites, advertising and sponsorships.
Read much much more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...as-vegas-chargers-los-angeles-rams/100611932/
NFL's revenue gap could drive more relocation
Brent Schrotenboer, USA TODAY April 18, 2017
The gap between rich and poor teams in the NFL has gotten so wide in recent years that three of the underprivileged franchises have taken drastic action:
In the past 15 months, the St. Louis Rams, San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders all decided to leave their home markets and move to cities that offered better stadiums and more local revenue potential.
By 2030, several more of the NFL’s low-revenue teams might face the same pressure: Do they risk shrinking financial margins as costs go up for all teams with rising player salaries? Or do they relocate to where they can better keep up with teams that have bigger markets or better stadiums?
That is the big issue boiling under the hot pot of NFL relocation, from the viewpoint of low-revenue teams, said Troy Blackburn, vice president of the small-market Cincinnati Bengals.
The revenue disparity between teams is “the largest it’s ever been in NFL history,” Blackburn told USA TODAY Sports. Even though teams equally share the revenues of NFL television contracts and a portion of ticket sales, they don't share other local stadium revenues with each other, leading to the rising gap.
==============================
Tension over the revenue disparity isn’t new, and this is not the first time the Bengals have spoken out about it. Mike Brown has been a leading voice about what he sees as structural financial imbalance in the NFL. On the other side of the spectrum, some owners have not been very sympathetic to this argument. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones even previously suggested the low-revenue teams need to be more aggressive chasing dollars.
“The big concern I have is not how to equalize the disparity in revenue but how to get the clubs that are not generating the revenue to see the light,” Jones said in The Wall Street Journal in 2004.
===============================
Not all small or big markets are the same. Big market and small market in this context also sometimes is used to mean the haves and have-nots: teams that are making big money because of big markets or lucrative stadiums, versus those that are not.
“You’re always going to have a bottom eight, but if you keep enhancing the bottom eight, and you change them out, that means everyone’s doing better,” said Marc Ganis, a sports consultant who works with NFL owners and helped the Rams and Raiders relocate from Los Angeles in 1995.
The difference this time is the widening of the gap, the rising costs for all teams and how to “change out” the bottom eight without having them consider more relocation, which is bad for loyal NFL customers in abandoned markets.
Much of the league's revenue is shared equally among 32 teams, recently at around $225 million each. But the disparity has grown because of the revenues that teams are not required to share with each other – local dollars that are kept by the team that earns them, including highly lucrative stadium suites, advertising and sponsorships.
Read much much more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...as-vegas-chargers-los-angeles-rams/100611932/
