Media's contempt of Bengals sparks the ire of present and former Bengals.

[Whatever]

(02-19-2020, 08:21 PM)Nately120 Wrote: The NFL is an oligopoly where the participants in the NFL have to be born into ownership or vetted and approved by the other owners (see Trump not being let into the NFL club when he attempted to buy the Bills).  The Bengals operate under the umbrella of the NFL where total expenditures have floors and ceilings to prevent larger market teams with deeper pockets from out-spending smaller market teams and the draft gives the worst teams the earliest picks for what should be the better players.

Yes, ticket sales and prices are a supply and demand situation, granted, but the TV deals and revenue sharing aren't doled out relative to the amount of wins your team has or the amount of fans you bring into the stadium (to my knowledge).  The way I see it (and I'm not an insider, so I'm mostly spitballing here) if the Bengals/Lions/Bills etc could be sold to clones of Robert Kraft it could be expected that total revenue of the league and the size of the pie each owner would receive would increase.

Mike Brown was born into a high-ranking position within one of the most profitable and desire oligopolies on earth.  If we were to compare the NFL to the major burger joints it would be like saying McDonalds made the most money and Crapburger made the least so the new burger that is the best tasting thing ever will only be sold at Crapburger in order to keep the burger franchises competitive.

I don't know how much of this makes sense...I'm procrastinating here.

The issue with the Kraft analogy is that every NFL team's success is directly tied to another team's failure.  If a Kraft clone took over the Bengals and hired the next Belicheck as coach and drafted the next Tom Brady and went on a similar tear to the one the Pats have been on, the Bengals would draw a lot more money.  However, the Steelers, Ravens,and especially the Browns would experience dramatic downturns. 

Since tickets and merchandise aren't included in revenue sharing, the only area that makes a difference to the league is TV ratings and the NFL will always put the good/hot/popular teams that draw ratings in the primetime spots, so even if a team is absolutely atrocious for a long period, it doesn't really hurt them.  Plus, the popularity of fantasy football now means that all they really need is a fantasy stud in those spots to draw viewers.