NFL is sitting on a litigation, financial and racial timebomb
After riding a wave of booming revenues and team values, the National Football League's bubble appears to have burst, and Thomas Lifson in American Thinker believes the NFL is underestimating the extent of the risks it now faces. Brain injury lawsuits are building up and TV ratings have dropped substantially with less revenue expected from future contracts. Furthermore, there is racial discontent among African-American players; should this continue to escalate, these players could easily shut down the league since they make up around 70% of NFL rosters. And the kneeling protest, exacerbated by President Trump's hostility, continues to spread.

I am not certain if the owners of the National Football League understand the extent of the peril they face. The revenues and value of their teams have skyrocketed thanks to a bubble created by television revenues that radically increased as the number of bidders and the nights of football games both increased. That bubble has burst and future television contracts will bring in substantially less. The other part of the revenue bubble has been funded by private boxes, especially in newer stadiums built specifically to offer more of them, along with increasing ticket prices.

The tort lawyers are rubbing together their hands anticipating the lucre headed their way thanks to brain injury lawsuits argued in front of sympathetic juries. And now attendance and TV ratings are down quite a lot.

Quite obviously, the owners already have been scared by signs of racial discontent among the African American players that make up about 70 percent of their rosters. Should tensions escalate, the black players easily could shut down the league, and probably could stymie as racist any attempt to reconstitute the rosters without the protestors. They had been hoping that the kneeling controversy started by Colin Kaepernik would calm down on its own, but President Trump’s remarks in Hunstville threw it right back in their faces. Some of them are very unhappy and fighting back:

Giants owners John Mara and Steve Tisch had a harsh reaction to President Trump’s call for NFL owners to fire players who refuse to stand for the national anthem.

“Comments like we heard last night from the president are inappropriate, offensive and divisive,” Mara and Tisch said in a statement Saturday. “We are proud of our players, the vast majority of whom use their NFL platform to make a positive difference in our society.” (snip) His comment sparked criticism from commissioner Roger Goodell, NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith, and several notable athletes, but Trump followed it up with a few the following Twitter posts:

If a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL,or other leagues, he or she should not be allowed to disrespect.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 23, 2017

...our Great American Flag (or Country) and should stand for the National Anthem. If not, YOU'RE FIRED. Find something else to do! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 23, 2017

Trump has once again shown himself to be a master flack, as Lucianne Goldberg puts it, completely in touch with mainstream America, and forcing clueless members of various elite bubbles into playing villain roles in the drama he is expertly scripting. Brian Joondeph explains this today elsewhere on this site.

Billionaire owners of NFL teams enjoy an extraordinarily pleasant social status, rich beyond the ability to spend, and in a position to bestow boons upon their local counterparts in elites across America’s major cities. They are celebrities of a sort. As such, they are most interested in what their peers think of them, and because the left has completely taken over elite culture, their peers want them to toe the progressive party line on race and everything else.

The owners should read Michael Walsh’s article, Farewell to the NFL” in order to understand how close they are to losing half or more of their revenues. They have been lulled by their success into thinking fans will stay with them through thick and thin.

Now that controversy surrounds NFL games, how many corporations are going to want to sign on to those lucrative corporate boxes? The last thing any host wants if for a political argument to break out among guests – perhaps business clients. But with players taking the knee and fans responding, isn’t it quite possible that conflicting passions could be ignited among those guests?

A lot of government agencies have sold a lot of municipal bonds to pay for lavish palaces for NFL teams, and repayment of those securities depends on revenues continuing strong.

I have never liked public subsidies for these billionaires, enabling them to pay millions to players. Maybe this will help end it.