Numbers Show NFL’s ‘Economic Realities’ for Lockout Unwarranted (1 Viewer)

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

The union will decertify and things are headed to court.

No chance IMO. They'll make the players suffer right up to the point where this is about to happen - then they relent.The one thing the owners will make sure they don't lose is their legal status as a cartel. Truly free labor markets are only useful when it helps you keep your costs down.

 

[Maurile Tremblay]

The one thing the owners will make sure they don't lose is their legal status as a cartel.

I don't know what you mean by "legal status as a cartel," but as Jason pointed out early in the thread, the NFL doesn't have any special antitrust exemption relevant to labor issues.Labor issues that are the subject of collective bargaining are generally exempt from antitrust scrutiny. But that exemption depends on the players' status as members of a cartel (i.e., a union), not on the owners' status.

 

[NE_REVIVAL]

San Diego: Alex Spanos (inherited)

I'm not sure how many of the others are wrong, but that one definitely is. Spanos was dirt poor for the first 27 years of his life. "In his early years, Alex Spanos worked night and day, seven days a week in his father’s bakery. His growing family was struggling to make ends meet on $40 a week." (link) "His business career began in 1951 with an $800 loan that enabled him to buy a truck and start his own catering business. With his entrepreneurial genius, he moved quickly into the fields of real estate and construction, where he became an industry leader." (link)

Shhhhh, don't you know that people with money are inherently bad?

 

[roadkill1292]

I always support the players in their disputes with the owners. Always. Let the revolution begin. The NFL is overdue a giant kick in its ###.

Why?The stronger a player's union is in a sport, the worse it usually is for fans of that sport.

In its history, NFL owners have been almost as oppressive in its labor practives as MLB was before Marvin Miller came along and freed the players. Some may excuse the things they did as simply trying to "maximize profits as any good businessman should," but I'm not one of those people. It may, in fact, be prudent for the NFL to give a little now and head off what happened with baseball instead of trying to tighten down the lid even more so.

I always support the players in their disputes with the owners. Always. Let the revolution begin. The NFL is overdue a giant kick in its ###.

I'm the complete opposite. I always support the owners. So go ahead with your revolution. You remember what happened to Robespierre, right?

Down with the king.

 

[roadkill1292]

I always support the players in their disputes with the owners. Always. Let the revolution begin. The NFL is overdue a giant kick in its ###.

Overdue?Why, because ratings suck? Because fans aren't ravenous about the game anymore? Because the quality of the sport has diminished?

Because of the way it continually tries to oppress its labor pool and squeeze the last nickel out of its fan base, I exult when the owners get the occasional chunk bitten out of their butts.The rookie draft is inherently unfair to players, the impending 18-game schedule is a monstrous disregard for the health of the players, preseason games are even more dead weight and the league does a pitiful job of taking care of its labor force post-retirement when the inevitable effects of the violent nature of the game cripple the people who were most responsible for our enjoyment of the game.

I'm getting to the point where I'd like to blow it up and start all over.

This sentiment amazes me and seems to be more prevalent in our Country's discourse all the time. Of course it is a human flaw with history littered with this sentiment leading to "overthrow" of the status quo. Are things as good as they could be, no they never are. But historically speaking, blowing up something that at its base is good and successful brings something that is worst. Start looking at history of the the world and how many of the dictators in the third world countries got their position by this process, the French Revolution, etc. I could go on forever with examples of this mindset and how the outcome is never what the original leaders envisioned. This is a fight between millionaires of which many are broke a few years after they quit and billionaires that many have leveraged themselves to the hilt. It is a massive pie of cash to split, will cooler heads prevail? I don't know. When human nature's jealous, envy, and egos get involved - common sense goes out the window. But let's not advocate destroying it and starting over.

That's a fair criticism and I shouldn't have made that comment. Tweaking is what's needed, not dismantlement. Of course, I want bigger tweaks than most.

 

[Ballstein]

As the citizen of A free country, if I am an owner, and don't wanna pay high salaries...then the players can take A hike. In return, the players should get another job, or start their own league

 

[Saints-Man]

So using your math, 17 of the 31 did not inherit their money. How does this back up your claim that "Very few of the NFL owners have worked for anything in their lives" when the MAJORITY are self made? The fact that is wasnt football related is irrelevant to whether or not the money was "earned" but nice try at a distraction. And instead of just letting your crazy statement die, you came back to prove just how wrong you were?

Well, ok, instead of "very few," it's half. Modifying statements based on facts is what intelligent people do. Making personal attacks is what incompetents do.

Half is VERY different than "very few". And to be fair, you were the one who attacked the integrity of the owners first. Just because none of them are here, it doesn't change the fact that your comment was a personal attack and attempt as smear on their character.

 

[ConstruxBoy]

It's hard for me to get behind a Cal-Berkeley guy that is rooting for the common man. I mean, duh.

NFL players are hardly "the common man." But they clearly are at much higher risk than any of the owners. Every time an NFL player steps on the football field, he could be facing an injury which would cut his earning potential by a factor of 100, for the rest of his life. What's the risk a billionaire owner is taking? He might have to sell one of his yachts?

How many yachts does Ralph Wilson own? Your problem is that you are equating the super rich owners of super rich franchises with the barely getting by (for an NFL owner) owners of poor economic franchises. They are not all equal. And the players getting that much more money and that much more freedom in where they play is bad for the fans of the poorer economic franchises. I'm a Bills fan. Therefore I support the owners.

 

[ConstruxBoy]

As the citizen of A free country, if I am an owner, and don't wanna pay high salaries...then the players can take A hike. In return, the players should get another job, or start their own league

I always laugh at comments like this. It's much more difficult and takes a lot more money to run an NFL franchise than you imagine. I would LOVE to see the players try to form a league. They would fail miserably.

 

[Orange Crush]

As the citizen of A free country, if I am an owner, and don't wanna pay high salaries...then the players can take A hike. In return, the players should get another job, or start their own league

I always laugh at comments like this. It's much more difficult and takes a lot more money to run an NFL franchise than you imagine. I would LOVE to see the players try to form a league. They would fail miserably.

There's already a league in existence called the UFL. How easy would it be to grow that league if a few of the NFL's stars who were free agents (say, Peyton Manning being the primary one) headed over to the UFL during the lockout? How many networks would come crashing through the UFL's front door looking to deal? I think the NFL would cave on their negotiating position almost instantly.

 

[Cripster]

As the citizen of A free country, if I am an owner, and don't wanna pay high salaries...then the players can take A hike. In return, the players should get another job, or start their own league

I always laugh at comments like this. It's much more difficult and takes a lot more money to run an NFL franchise than you imagine. I would LOVE to see the players try to form a league. They would fail miserably.

There's already a league in existence called the UFL. How easy would it be to grow that league if a few of the NFL's stars who were free agents (say, Peyton Manning being the primary one) headed over to the UFL during the lockout? How many networks would come crashing through the UFL's front door looking to deal? I think the NFL would cave on their negotiating position almost instantly.

I may be wrong, but doesn't the NFL have some sort of relationship with the UFL.

 

[Andrew Garda]

San Diego: Alex Spanos (inherited)

I'm not sure how many of the others are wrong, but that one definitely is. Spanos was dirt poor for the first 27 years of his life. "In his early years, Alex Spanos worked night and day, seven days a week in his father’s bakery. His growing family was struggling to make ends meet on $40 a week." (link) "His business career began in 1951 with an $800 loan that enabled him to buy a truck and start his own catering business. With his entrepreneurial genius, he moved quickly into the fields of real estate and construction, where he became an industry leader." (link)

Shhhhh, don't you know that people with money are inherently bad?

Unless it's ME!

 

[Orange Crush]

As the citizen of A free country, if I am an owner, and don't wanna pay high salaries...then the players can take A hike. In return, the players should get another job, or start their own league

I always laugh at comments like this. It's much more difficult and takes a lot more money to run an NFL franchise than you imagine. I would LOVE to see the players try to form a league. They would fail miserably.

There's already a league in existence called the UFL. How easy would it be to grow that league if a few of the NFL's stars who were free agents (say, Peyton Manning being the primary one) headed over to the UFL during the lockout? How many networks would come crashing through the UFL's front door looking to deal? I think the NFL would cave on their negotiating position almost instantly.

I may be wrong, but doesn't the NFL have some sort of relationship with the UFL.

Nope.The UFL has positioned itself and has partly marketed itself in being a "minor league" for the NFL. But there is no legal or economic relationship between the two. If the NFL wants to sign a UFL player who is under contract with the UFL, the NFL team has to pay the UFL a fee to "buy out" the contract.

 

[visgc]

As the citizen of A free country, if I am an owner, and don't wanna pay high salaries...then the players can take A hike. In return, the players should get another job, or start their own league

I always laugh at comments like this. It's much more difficult and takes a lot more money to run an NFL franchise than you imagine. I would LOVE to see the players try to form a league. They would fail miserably.

There's already a league in existence called the UFL. How easy would it be to grow that league if a few of the NFL's stars who were free agents (say, Peyton Manning being the primary one) headed over to the UFL during the lockout? How many networks would come crashing through the UFL's front door looking to deal? I think the NFL would cave on their negotiating position almost instantly.

I may be wrong, but doesn't the NFL have some sort of relationship with the UFL.

Nope.The UFL has positioned itself and has partly marketed itself in being a "minor league" for the NFL. But there is no legal or economic relationship between the two. If the NFL wants to sign a UFL player who is under contract with the UFL, the NFL team has to pay the UFL a fee to "buy out" the contract.

 

[visgc]

A few interesting pieces of information in the Forbes article, but not enough for me to feel informed enough to take sides.

The author's emphasis seemed to be on the growth of the NFL revenues, but to me, that is irrelevant to assessing the fairness of the current CBA. With salary caps tied to revenues, both sides benefit and cancel each other out for purposes of determining a fair package.

The author does provide an average figure for operating profits (about 30million IIRC), but doesn't include (or even attempt to estimate) the costs of depreciation, interst, ammortization, etc. So that info isn't very useful either.

I was interested to learn that the owners will have to payback the TV revenues except the $1billion in DirectTV fees for 2011. It only works out to about $30 mil per team. The legal and publicity risk involved with a lock out would have to outweigh that one-time payout for most owners. I think that's a positive for the chances of reaching a deal, because this lockout likely isn't motivated by the desire to get a huge 2011 payday.

I also found this interesting:

"The union agreed that in the Final League Year, clubs would be relieved of their obligation to fund numerous benefit programs. Examples include second career savings (401K), player annuity, severance pay and performance-based pay. The total league-wide contributions to such plans in 2009, the last capped year, were in excess of $325 million or more than $10 million per club.”

The author uses it as an argument that the owners hood-winked the players out of 10,000,000 each, but the other side of the coin is that this expense must be factored into the budget moving forward. If the Packers only made 9 million in profts without the 10million cost of retirement benefits, then this additional expense pushes them into a loss for 2011 if nothing else changes.

Another useful piece of information from the article was the escalation in the team values. Just as not all stocks pay yearly cash dividends, not all business success is measured in realized profit. If the owners chose to report assets on the Fair Value basis, they'd have considerably more unrealized gains to show for it. And selling a portion of the team isn't the only way to convert these gains into cash.

In the end, I find it hard to understand how many in this thread can have such hardened opinions while being privy to very little information. I wonder if the figures have any baring at all, or if most people are inclined to support either the bourgeoise or the proletariat uniformally in all instances, without regard to circumstances.

I'm resigned to the fact that I'll never have enough information to pick a side to cheer for in this contest. Which is just as well, I can't fathom the amount of money at stake anyway. From a fan's POV, I'm more interested in whether they can find a fair deal for both sides while perserving competitive balance for the small markets. It's not an easy task, but I'm confident that the pie is large enough and the people involved are smart enough to find equitable distributions...hopefully by WK1 2011