Thanks to Forbes magazine,we once again know specifically what we always knew generally about the National Football League. It gushes money and enables franchises, including the lousy ones, to become obscenely overvalued.
Exhibit A for locals: The Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The Bucs, who have been putting out a certifiably substandard product for the last four years, are currently valued, according to Forbes, at more than $1.2 billion. And that’s a 15 percent increase from last year’s substandard product. Nineteen years ago the Glazer family bought the Bucs franchise for $192 million.
The reason the NFL (where the average team worth is $1.43 billion) also stands for “Nobody Financially Loses” is readily apparent. The league kicks back more than 60 percent of total revenues to its 32 franchises. TV rights alone are worth nearly $5 billion this season. Plus brand-name marketing that includes stadium sponsorships, corporate suites and countless variations on a logoed, paraphernalia theme. Cachet also means cash.
But that overlooks a fundamental, economically ironic underpinning of the NFL. At its core, it’s hardly a paragon of free enterprise.
Imagine getting somebody else (colleges) to train your prospective employees (players). Somebody else (governments) to help build your new or renovated plant (stadium). Somebody else (the media) to promote your business (football). And, then, of course, somebody else (network television) to ensure that you make money even if you put out an inferior (losing) product.
The NFL takes it from there by relying on what it does superbly: promote, market and create mystique. Watch ESPN anytime of the year and its stable of household-name shills are talking pro football. It’s embedded into the culture. The NFL is as much about show biz as football. And it continues to work wonderfully well in a sports-celebrity, vicarious-life culture.
Is this a great country or what?
Dotcoms have been known to bubble over, and the appreciation-forever housing market has been outed. But the NFL continues apace as this capitalist hybrid that took off with television in the 1960s and continues to soar.
Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, Aaron Hernandez–hell, Ray Lewis. Mere blips and speed bumps. Ratings and sponsor dollars trend ever higher.
Back to the Buccaneers. Multi-millionaire, free-agent busts? A penalty-driven, discipline meltdown? Twelve men on the field? No matter. Chances are that Forbes will bump the Bucs up another 15 percent in valuation next year.
Is this a great gig or what?