If you look at the facts, the NFL is in fact the richest league in the world and not even the EPL can touch it. But my question is, hypothetically, would a league in Europe consisting of the 32 biggest clubs, would it be able to compete with the NFL? I know most top-tier football leagues have 20 teams but lets just say 32 to match up evenly with the NFL.
How do you figure the NFL is the richest league in the world? Present the facts. There already is a Super League - see the CHAMPIONS LEAGUE! Look at what Manchester City spent the past year on players? The NFL doesn't spend anywhere near that on a whole team.
If you look at the Forbes list of sports teams, the NFL dominates. The NFL makes the most money of any sports league. It's not about spending, it's about making money. The NFL blows the rest of the world away for its sheer money making ability. Hell, my Cleveland Browns are worth more money than almost every single soccer team in the world. The team is valued at over $1billion.
Soccer teams are, frankly, really bad at the business side of the sport. There is still a lot of romanticism when it comes to the sport, left over from an earlier age. Soccer owners and fans are loathe to admit that soccer is a business and needs to be treated as such. From what I've read about how clubs actually operate, they're remarkably amateurish in their approach to the money aspects of the game. If you wanted an example of how not to set up a sports league in terms of finances, look at the EPL. Just as one example, the book Soccernomics has a whole section on how most clubs don't even bother to hire a relocation expert to help their new players get settled in to their new home city. The NFL, and every other professional league in the US, will do everything it can to help a player moving from Cleveland to Cincinnati, but a soccer club won't help out a kid moving from Cameroon to Liverpool.
And that's exactly why the NFL is one of the most successful sports businesses in the world. You'd never see a Portsmouth style meltdown in the NFL.
Here are the top ten according to Forbes. Manchester United 1.8 billion Dallas Cowboys 1.6 billion Washington Redskins 1.5 billion New England Patriots 1.32 billion New York Yankees 1.3 billion Real Madrid 1.29 billion Arsenal 1.2 billion N.Y. Giants 1.18 billion N.Y. Jets 1.17 billion Houston Texans 1.17 billion I wonder though if soccer teams throughout the world don't have a larger "potential" than NFL teams though. The teams above have markets such as Asia, Africa, and Latin America that are not untapped, but have some potential. The NFL teams probably don't have as great as potential because how much more popular could it be? Realistically, the NFL only draws the majority of the fans from the States. The Premier League receives more in television revenue from rights from countries outside of the UK as opposed to inside the UK. Now granted, they spend every dime they get and then some. They don't and won't have a salary cap in soccer though. The NFL has had a salary cap until this year. It will be interesting to see if it is part of the labor agreement or not.
The top clubs would have to give up quite a bit to ever rival the NFL. I think they are quite happy being the top dogs in their respective leagues with essentially a guarantee on the Champions League every year. You better believe there will be a salary cap in the next labor agreement in the NFL. It is the cornerstone of the league. It may be changed quite a bit to include more guaranteed contracts but it won't go away. The owners will shut the league down for a couple years before giving it up.
The reason NFL clubs make more money is because they underplay the players. And the players have no other option since there is no other alternative league to the NFL. Soccer clubs cannot underpay their players because there are a dozen other top soccer leagues that will pay the player a higher wage.
No, not really. Another thing to keep in mind is that when a player is a free agent in the NFL, every team is in the running for him. In soccer, when a top player goes Bosman, there aren't 32 teams bidding for him. There's maybe 5 in England, 2 in Spain, 1 in Germany, a couple in Italy.
The NFL doesn't underpay players. If you look at salaries of the top players from the NFL versus the top leagues in Europe the salaries are comparable. There may not be an alternative league but there are alternative teams. A player at a top club in Europe actually has fewer alternatives if he wants a comparative salary than in the NFL because only a few clubs can afford the top wages. You won't find Ronaldo leaving Real Madrid for Wigan because they can't afford to pay him but you will find top NFL stars leaving a Super Bowl team for a team at the bottom because they can all offer the same amounts. Also there are far fewer players in American football than there are in soccer because only America plays it. So the NFL teams can't bring in a cheaper foreigner.
But if you look at the salaries of bottom players in the NFL (think special teamers and practice squad) and bottom players in Europe (think perennial bench warmers), there is a huge disparity. Merely looking at the top players proves nothing since they are likely to be outliers, comparing the middle and bottom gives a more accurate picture. You won't disagree that the NFL operates as a cartel, and its always easier to make more profits as a cartel. If there was no salary cap, and the NFL had comparable rival leagues in 50 other countries, the players would have to be paid more and the profits would erode away.
i think yes, a super league would make more money than the nfl, and it would have at least some of the following characteristics: first, it must not be a "domestic league killer",actually it must promote them, and all 53 UEFA federations should have the right to compete. second, must have a salary cap third, fewer games.
oh... almost forgot, there must be 2 types of relegation, the classic type of reñegation and a new type called group relegation, this ensures potencial participation of all clubs, not just the rich ones.
Professional athletes are most certainly commodities. They are bought and sold as dictated by the market at prices dictated by what they can provide. Your comparison doesn't work with the bottom players because of the huge size difference in squads. Manchester City for example has a squad of somewhere around 35 senior players. Every NFL team has a squad of 53 players. The minimum salary in the NFL is $275,000. I'd love to see what the lowest salary is at say Blackpool.
NFL doesn't really underpay the players (keep in mind the number of games they play). One of the big reasons NFL teams make so much money is they don't have to pay any foreign team/league transfer fees to get players. In soccer, a big chunk of the would-be-profits gets 'distributed' to tens of leagues and hundreds of club around the world in the form of transfer fees. The big(ger) clubs are basically supporting many smaller leagues and clubs while the NFL teams don't have to worry about that. If the top 32 soccer teams formed a league and didn't have to pay anyone else a transfer fee you bet they would be just as profitable, if not more and their franchise value would skyrocket.
Commodities means a demand supply situation without a qualitative difference in the goods. What you described about pro-athletes are not the same as commodities, since there is a a significant qualitative difference between pro-athletes.
Quiestion. What do NFL earn money on? Is it the spectaters or the the sponsors ???? is the topic about earning money or the money use?
The NFL's biggest source of income is from the TV rights. There are teams, like the NY Giants, that could never sell a ticket and still be profitable due to the TV revenue. Of course, teams also make money off of ticket sales, merchandise and corporate sponsorship.
yes - as someone said before, the NFL (moreso than most other American sports) is a true cartel. Profits from TV and merchandising are shared. Most sponsors are league-wide official sponsors and pay good money for the priviledge (although this may change due to the American Needle case) and the smallest and least profitable teams will always make money. The teams that are valued the most are those in the larger markets and make more money because of what they charge spectators and mostly VIPs to attend games. This is where the competition in the league is nowadays. Notice every team save for the Saints, Vikings, Bills and Chargers are in stadiums that are all younger than 20 years old and the more profitable teams are in absolute palaces. In terms of money, European soccer leagues are most like the MLB in that there is no (serious) salary cap and the team that spends most usually dominates. There's no way you could create a European Football League like the NFL - the fans would never agree to the concessions you'd have to make to make it happen. The Champions League is the best you can hope for (for now).
Exactly. While I don't have time to do the analysis, I would bet that of the NFL teams listed in the Top 10 have been around these values for decades, with moderate annual growth. Whereas teams like Man Utd and Real Madrid have skyrocketed in value since the mid-90's when the Champions League started and televised coverage became global. That's also why owners of NFL teams have been happy to buy soccer teams - they know how to turn sports teams into moneymakers. It's difficult sometimes to determine what is spending versus investment. The big soccer teams do pay ridiculous amounts for players, but ultimately the goal is that those players will bring increased revenues. Even though many major teams are in debt, they've done so with a longer-term objective in mind. Of course, like Portsmouth, it doesn't always work, but it's a gamble billionaires like to take. My response to the original post is that, eventually, soccer teams will dominate the listings of most highly valued sports teams. In fact, it's not a matter of if, but when. Right now, most of the value is concentrated in a few top European teams. But just like Manchester City, other owners will come in and try to challenge the dominant teams, and eventually when the dust settles, there should be a more normal distribution of value and a bigger list of "rich" teams.