The NFL is an exceedingly successful sport, and those owners of the NFL teams, are all incredibly wealthy. In fact, most people aren’t really able to fathom just how rich that these sports owners are, of which the top fifteen of NFL franchise owners as reported by cbssports.com are all multi-billionaires. Be that as it may, to the uninitiated, it might seem rather strange, though, that most sports owners, purposefully have no interest in owning their own sports stadium; of which, there are significant reasons for this. The first reason, is the fact that stadiums cost an awful lot of money to build, and in a sport which plays so few games in a given year, such as perhaps just ten or so home games, as in the NFL, this thus means that the stadium, unless those that own it, can come up with a plethora of other events, sits empty most of the time; therefore, signifying that there probably is not going to be any viable way in which a modern-day sports stadium is going to be profitable for the owner of such, ever. The second point that NFL owners are quite cognizant of, is because they don’t own a super-expensive and unmovable fixture as in the actual stadium, they therefore can utilize their moveable sports franchise as leverage with different cities, so that if they don’t get what they so want, whether it be cheaper rent, or renovations, or this or that, then they can effectively move their franchise to another city that will be more accommodating.
In the present day, the business of sports ownership involves making money in every way so possible, which includes ticket sales, advertising, marketing, media rights, licensing, and sponsorships. If, those sports owners, actually believed that owning a sports stadium, would somehow be profitable for them, then for a certainty, they would own that. The fact that they are wont specifically not to do that, reflects, correctly, that the sucker in this context, are those cities; who along with their taxpayers, are the ones that are stuck paying for a stadium, come what may. What we find, though, oftentimes, is that a stadium build is projected by a given city council as being a net positive from not only a city image standpoint, but also in regards to the additional employment, created; in addition, to the out-of-towners that arrive for events, and of course the revenues from rent and other peripheral things, related to the stadium; but alas, those projections seldom match up to the reality of what the real numbers actually are for the sports stadium owner.
If cities, were smarter, they wouldn’t ever want to own a sports stadium, without also owning the sports franchise, itself. What we have instead, is a situation, in which the sports franchise owner has seemingly all of the advantages and none of the disadvantages; and the sports stadium owner, is therefore put into the unenviable situation in which they don’t have any sort of leverage, at all. Further to the point, when it comes to a stadium and the art of the deal, so of; the city council is typically negotiating against a billionaire, and most of the time in that sort of situation, that city council is going to be seriously outclassed and seriously outplayed.