Ongoing CBA discussions

There are definitely drawbacks to public ownership. Advocates of private ownership argue that team owners assume tremendous financial risk, putting up large amounts of money and taking on debt. Conceptually, this is true; in practice, the financial risk is minimal. NFL ratings continue to soar, delivering a reliable audience in an otherwise fragmented media era.
Not coincidentally, franchise values also continue to rise. Located in a city of just 102,000 people, the Packers have an estimated worth of $1 billion.

Got to wonder if there's some sort of franchise bubble.

Got to wonder if there's some sort of franchise bubble.

Funny thing about those financial bubbles - they are far easier to see in hindsight.

The ongoing NFL-NFLPA dispute is simple really. The owners overspent on unnecessary stadiums, and now they want the players to work more for less pay to help pay down the debt. That's your entire labor dispute in one sentence.

The NFL produces three things: stadium debt, intellectual property, and bureaucracy. None of these things should be confused with "free market" values. The league is a prime example of what happens when you mix politically influential egos with easy credit and a media environment that largely promotes economic ignorance. You have the perfect boom business.

But the networks face their own economic challenges, and unless you can guarantee that Fox, ESPN, CBS, et al., will be stronger in the future than they are now, then you can't say with any confidence the NFL will survive and thrive indefinitely. The league is built on consumption, and when you adopt that model, eventually you'll eat yourself out of your $1.3 billion house and home.

Found this from Forbes.

The Most Valuable Teams In Sports - Forbes.com (http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/13/nfl-cowboys-yankees-biz-media-cx_tvr_0113values.html)

NFL: Taking stock of free-agent moves - ESPN (http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=clayton_john&id=6189122)

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Albert Breer

Filed to NFL.com: Confirming that International Investment Bank has been retained by the NFLPA to review any financials released by NFL.

Additionally, according to a source, NFL has not released any additional financial info yet. This, for the PA, is to be ready for that. ...

... And on top of that, an auditor who the union has used for years arrived at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service at 3 p.m.
3 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

One would hope that this means that the NFL and PA have agreed on some way of "opening the books"

or not:

AlbertBreer
Fujita on financials: "What's shared with us is not sufficient. It's more or less just a snapshot." Bank helps players use info they DO have
1 minute ago

Even if I agreed with the players about the books, which I don't, I see a lot of "attitude" in this quote that irritates me.

I still can't for the life of me understand why they can't reach an agreement along these lines:
The PA gives the owners a list 10 teams that they'd like to see the books of. The owners select 5 of those and redact personal information so the books aren't team specific, and then give those books to PA's auditing firm.

There just has to be a way to get around both sides fears...

Can't help but think the owners are hiding something with this selective view of the financials. If you "need" a bigger piece of the pie, just open the books and prove it. The numbers don't lie. Why is that so hard to understand?

Impasse approaches regarding financial information | ProFootballTalk (http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/03/09/impasse-approaches-regarding-financial-information/)

Andrew Brandt, who has quickly become a go to source of info for this dispute, was on Sirius with Peter King and Ross Tucker this morning. He had a very accurate answer when asked specifically why the owners wouldn't open the books.

(from my memory) He said that, basically, the books today show a healthy business, and that the owners argument is that IF the CBA as it was continued forward, than the books in 2014-5 would show a very different and very unhealthy league. He continued, saying, that the owners point of view is that they are trying to be pro-active in getting a working model, but if they open the books completely the PA would simply harp on the current state, and not look to the future state [when put in this context Jerry Richardson's outburst about the P/L statements and ratios makes more sense].

Peter King pressed ABrandt about if it was possible that some teams were simply trying to hide 50-60 million dollars, and ABrandt simply said yes.

Seems like owners are trying to bring in level headed owners to get something done. Mara yesterday, today Rooney from the Steelers.

Man, regardless of side, I hope they get this thing done!

Latest update on the CBA talks now in a critical, and perilous, state.

Two good articles on the "Show us the books" issue.

Show us (more of) your books! | National Football Post (http://www.nationalfootballpost.com/Show-us-more-of-your-books.html)
by Andrew Brandt

and

NFL.com news: Union wants more financial information than NFL has offered (http://www.nfl.com/news/story/09000d5d81ead445/article/union-wants-more-financial-information-than-nfl-has-offered?module=HP_headlines)
by Albert Breer

From Breer's article
Additionally, the NFL offered to illustrate the effect of economic conditions, the number of clubs who have experienced a shift in profitability over the aforementioned five-year period, 2005-09, and a third-party auditor to assess all information.

The union declined the offer to view the information.

According to a league source, the NFL's feeling was that it had made a major concession to reveal information on profitability that isn't even available to its clubs. The union's feeling, according to a players association source, was that it was important not to accept any offer to see additional information until it felt the information was sufficient to make decisions on how the $9.3 billion in revenue will be split up going forward, which remains the biggest issue in these labor talks.