$309.2m

[Whatever]

(07-27-2021, 04:46 PM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: You're leaving a ton out. 

While the Bengals do not make as much revenue from their stadium they also didn't pay a cent for it either.  Teams near the top, like the Cowboys, Giants, Jets, those are primarily privately funded stadiums.  Jerry Jones for example paid for over 600 million of the Cowboys stadium's cost.  There's also operations costs the Bengals have been spared as well.  Hamilton County has picked up the bulk of those expenses as well.

This is before we even get to the fact the Bengals would make more if they had a better product, and did a better job marketing it.  You're also looking at a snapshot of revenue when attendance was down.  If you were to pull our attendance revenue from, say, 2003-2007, or 2012-2105 you'd find we'd be close to the middle of the league.

I don't think you can say with any certainity that if you switched the Bengals with another team in another market that they'd see an identical amount of revenue as the current team does.  And the reverse is true as well.  If you plopped the Chiefs franchise down into Cincinnati, with everything exactly the same outside of the teams themselves, they'd make more money.

Lastly, to give the Bengals credit for if they elect to stay is downright offensive.  It would be borderline criminal for them to abandon this city after the sweetheart deal they were given by the county, and the return they've provided.  And if you think they're going to find some other magical market that's going to provide them tons of more money you're sadly mistaken.  Where would they go?  St. Louis?  Portland?  Omaha?  San Antonio?  Even if they did decide to make the move, it's going to require a lot of investment on their part.   A new city isn't going to gift them a stadium outright.  Those days are gone, especially now coming off Covid reaking havoc on cities and counties budgets.  There also going to expect investments into a practice facility and a modern front office.  All of this comes with an extreme cost when totalled up.

PBS was built in an era where cities were footing the full bill or close to it for NFL stadiums.  Not to mention Mikey had the county over the barrel because the county had broken the Riverfront stadium lease by withholding payments to the team.  Mike threatened to move the team to Cleveland unless he got a new taxpayer funded stadium, which was the standard at that time.  Honestly, from a business standpoint, he would have been better off doing that and renaming the team the Browns because the Browns have been a bigger joke than the Bengals ever since their return, but still destroy us in revenue, ticket sales, merch, etc.  Then, he had to fight the county in court for no other reason than "we don't like the contract we just agreed to."

Kind of a chicken and egg argument.  Fans want things like expanding the scouting department and an indoor practice facility to improve the on field product.  However those things cost money and when you're at the bottom of the league in revenue, it cuts down on the money you have to to spend for those things.  Besides that, again, the Browns have been a worse product since their return and still kill the Bengals in revenue.  The Bengals had to have corporations step in and buy up chunks of tickets to keep the playoff game against the Chargers from being blacked out.  That's sad.  The whole "they'd sell more tickets if they won more" rationale is grossly overstated when you look at tangible numbers from when the team has been good vs bad.

Juxtaposing two teams isn't realistic, especially when one of those teams has been to back to back SB's.  If the Bengals moved, their revenue is going to go up due to being the new hot ticket in town, which means higher ticket prices, which means more gate revenue.  The Bengals have some of, if not the, lowest ticket prices in the league, so literally almost any other major metropolitan market would be a step up.  You also get a huge influx of merch revenue from people in the new home market.  I'll guarantee you that if the Bengals moved to Portland, San Antonio, St. Louis, they wouldn't be sweating blackouts for home playoff games.

Mikey wasn't given a sweetheart deal.  Hamilton County screwed him.  You can't be mad at a guy for screwing people who are screwing him.  If you are, you should have elected smarter and/or more ethical politicians.  They've broken the PBS lease on numerous occasions, too.  Does anyone honestly think that if the Bengals leave any of the other 31 owners are going to relocate to Cincinnati, especially if they're footing the bill for a new stadium?  Get real.  No other owner is going to do that.  The way the county operates, they're likely to give a team land to build a stadium on, then decide they want to be paid for it and take them to court.