Once again Roger Goodell comes around like Santa Claus in the summer time to divvy up the take from last year’s NFL action, and quite a take it was. The National Football League split over six billion dollars between its 32 member teams. No wonder they can afford to pay Sir Roger over $30,000,000 per year.
The Green Bay Packers CEO and President Mark Murphy let the cat out of the bag when he reported that the Packers earned $187,700,000 in national revenue in 2013. Multiply that times 32 and we get a whopping $6,006,400,000 that was split up. Not bad for a business that only brings in money for six months out of the year.
Not only that, Murphy also revealed that this year’s take showed a nice 4.3% increase over last year. Most any business would be quite happy with a 4+% boast in just one year. Not surprisingly, the increase in profits corresponds directly to an increase in the amount of television coverage that each team got last year.
Specifically, there was also increased revenue from a new deal with Nike and the NFL Network finally made peace with Time Warner which meant more money for everyone. And the Packers needed the boast.
When they signed both Clay Matthews and Aaron Rodgers to fat long term contract extensions, and then turned around and dumped over $300 million into fixing up an aging, but still magic Lambeau Field, the Green Bay Packers were not expecting to be having a really banner year in profits. In 2013 their yearly revenues actually slipped by over 41%, but it was obviously worth it.
Still in all, the Packers came out with a net income of $25,300,000 for 2013. Mark Murphy told reporters, “We are investing in our team and investing in our stadium with a real priority on the game day experience.”
The 2014-2015 professional football experience should be better than ever with increased television coverage including a great new Thursday Night Football package to be offered on CBS starting this fall. Addition options and revenue, with be coming from DirectTV Sunday Ticket programming.
The NFL took in almost ten billion dollars last year. Goodell has probably already set aside additional storage space at his offices just to store all the extra cash that will be coming in next year. But, what the hell. Most of us can’t wait for the NFL to get underway in August with some more gridiron action.
