Call it the elephant in the locker room.
Amid all the finger-pointing this week surrounding the sickening video of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice sacking his now-wife unconscious in a casino elevator, the unspoken truth is that the NFL allows this reprehensible behavior because it’s one of the greatest money-making machines ever invented.
The rewards are so immense that the risks, be they domestic abuse or the players’ debilitating concussions, seem to be an after-thought when they get down to business at the NFL’s glitzy Park Avenue headquarters.
And what a business it is. Consider this: With the average NFL franchise now worth $1.4 billion, the league’s 32 teams sport a market value of $45 billion, making the NFL worth almost as much as Starbucks — and just as ubiquitous.
Little wonder. So far, the league owners have stood by their commissioner, Roger Goodell.
“He’s taken these owners from mere millionaire to billionaires,” one football insider recounted last week.
Perhaps. But Goodell and major league football has had a lot of help along the way and the wind at its back, most of it courtesy of Uncle Sam.
As with other trophy assets, be it beach-front property in the Hamptons, Central Park West condos or tech startups, much of the Federal Reserve’s money-printing has inflated asset values while die-hard football fans have seen their wages go nowhere since 2008.
Since the Fed’s money machine went into overdrive in 2008, the top NFL franchise, the Dallas Cowboys, has doubled in value, from $1.6 billion back then to $3.2 billion today.
The New England Patriots also saw their franchise value double, while the value of the NY Giants spiked by 75 percent.
As Forbes.com puts it, “There has never been a better time to be an NFL owner.”
Franchise values rose by 23 percent last year alone, according to Forbes.
These teams are highly lucrative. Last year, the Cowboys raked in a quarter of a billion in profits.
But there’s more. The profitable juggernaut that is the NFL office also continues to enjoy a grandfathered-in not-for-profit status, despite the fact that it pays a handful of top executives a total of $50 million dollars a year in salaries and bonuses.
Then there are the NFL stadiums financed with taxpayer dollars — $200 million in municipal debt, for example, from the city of Atlanta for a new home for its beloved Falcons.
Yes, NFL Inc. is flourishing, even as its fans struggle with high unemployment and stagnant wages.
It comes as no surprise that the billionaires who are the exclusive shareholders in one of the best businesses in the world want to keep sweeping their dirty laundry under the rug.