8 hours ago
(Yesterday, 01:49 PM)rfaulk34 Wrote: Imagine the Browns have owned and been running the team since the late '60s, always being cheap and hoarding money. Imagine during that time that the NFL has a policy for revenue sharing, so that you get free money every year. Then imagine that lately, the NFL is giving you hundreds of millions of dollars, every year.
People need to drop this 'cash poor' BS. They've been making money hand over fist for decades. They're not some startup company.
The first NFL broadcast deal that created the revenue sharing was for $4.65m/yr (total, not per team). The reason why the money-into-escrow rule was ever made? The PLAYERS demanded it to make sure the owners could fulfill the monetary demands of the contracts they offered because the NFL was not making money hand-over-fist like it does now. Not to mention that in the 90s the Brown family only owned 20% of the Bengals, up from the 10% they owned in the 60s.
All their money for the first 50 years was put towards buying the rest of the team which they finished in 2011.
So they've only been making money "hand-over-fist" for about 13 years. I put it in quotations because Forbes also projected the Bengals operating income (which is BEFORE taxes) for 2024 at $76m (and in 2011 NFL revenue was less than 1/2 of 2024). I don't know how much they pay in taxes, but I do know the government loves to get their cut.
Don't get me wrong the Browns/Blackburns are still probably making a couple ten million per year now and do need to spend more and hire a freaking non-embarassing professional scouting department, but this idea that the NFL has always been just printing hundreds of millions/billions of dollars and they have been Scrooge McDucking it all since the 1960s is silly.
Honestly they probably just need to sell the team to someone who can put up the liquid cash needed to run an NFL team these days, but I can't see them ever doing that.
- - - - - -
And now my day has been ruined because I had to defend the Browns/Blackburns. Thanks. Lol
____________________________________________________________
