I guess tickets were underpriced before? The demand is clearly outstripping supply. Can't even blame this one on the hedge funds.
Modern sports has mastered the art of storytelling and rivalry. They immerse you in the players' and coaches' lives, and fans begin to find their favorites to root for and against.
It's not surprising fans will pay $500, $1000, or more to see an especially memorable game. Or pay top dollar for a signed jersey.
This is no different than any other hobby. Lives are short and people want to immerse themselves in the things they love.
I don’t know - in Australia we oversize stadiums and, relative to population, expand our leagues much more so that there is much more opportunity to attend in person. A family of four can attend anything except finals (playoffs) for easily under au$100. But private ownership isn’t a part of the most popular codes.
I love live sport, and it’d be sad if the opportunity to attend was restricted to only the wealthy because charging half the people 5x the money is the optimal business decision.
(I say sort of because you could say it's the same word same definition just perhaps used more literally. But it certainly has a connotation to most of us that I think is how you're reading it above.)
I think the NFL is more of an entrenched business with great brand recognition than a cartel. College football players want an NFL contract because they trust that the NFL will be around in 10 years. (Same reason that CS grads want to work for Google and not a random startup; Google will be around in 5 years.) This means that the NFL gets first pick on the most talented players. That is what prevents upstart leagues from being successful. Players have seen what happened to competing leagues; their counterparts are now unemployed. Without good players, nobody is going to watch your thing, and thus, the NFL will continue to dominate.
I think that with an infinite amount of money, you could probably create a new football league for a new generation. You will need billions of dollars to build 32 new stadiums. You will need billions of dollars to pay Patrick Mahomes $500M a year to switch sides. (x32 teams x53 players on the roster = 800 billion dollars a year in salary costs ;)
Because nobody has an infinite amount of money, it's not really going to happen that way. I bet you could woo a number of viewers over by having a sane online streaming package. I want to watch every game in the season for a fixed price. No blackouts. No ads. No delay.
Therefore, we need not argue about whether they are or are not a cartel - or are engaging in anti-competitive behavior: our government has already defined them as such.
College football around here is much more affordable (as are college basketball games, G league for basketball, and minor league baseball).
You are off on his salary by an order of magnitude. ;)
He’s also the number one paid NFL player, so extending his salary to the entire roster is just hyperbolic fiction.
Yes, you don't pay your backup defensive linemen the same as your quarterback, but the point is, people won't watch if those players are bad, and people aren't going to jump ship for free. You will have to build the league out of talent that somehow won't play for the NFL. It's going to be costly.
I've decided I'm kind of "meh" on the whole salary cap thing. I want to see some star defensive linemen play. I want to see a $10M/year punter. Let's go CRAZY with this new league.
Michael Dickson wasn’t far off from that in the NFL in recent history. I’m not even remotely a sports guy and yet I knew this.
> the big names already have guaranteed income
Actually, many don’t. Even Mahomes has so little guaranteed I’m more than sure you could sway him to your fantasy fiction league for less than half the figure you listed as guaranteed income.