Yesterday, 07:44 PM
(02-17-2025, 05:32 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: They actually owned only 10% when the team was created, they just had the reins of the team. They've spent most of that 57 years buying up ownership over, including picking up 10% in 2003 and 30% in 2011 so now they're one of only three people to have ownership in the team (One guy owns I think only like 3-5%, and another owns just 1 share of the 586 total.) To throw that into context it means as recently as when they drafted Palmer that they only actually owned ~55% of the team and ~65% when they drafted Dalton.
I'm absolutely sure they have $100m saved between them, but keep in mind that just Burrow, Orlando, Chase, and Hendrickson along with signing just your 1st round picks in a 3 year span are ~$360m guaranteed at signing of cash that needs to go into escrow and I am not sure if practical guarantees need to also go in or if its just guaranteed at signing. If it's practical as well, then that number will be much higher.
While the Browns aren't hurting financially, and they can afford to spend more overall, they do probably have a limit of how much guaranteed money in a time span they can dole out.
The NFL imposes a debt limit on owners. You can only leverage the worth of your team so much to get cash, and once you do that, you obviously can't do it again until you pay off that debt, so it's not an unlimited solution.
Pretty sure the Raiders ran into this a few years ago when they traded Mack because they couldn't afford to put the money in escrow for a guaranteed contract.
