The NFL and Antitrust Law

Adam Winters ()
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Adam Winters: Kirkland & Ellis LLP

Chapter Chapter 16 in The Economics of the National Football League, 2012, pp 277-323 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract While every owner is likely to say that their goal is to win and to put the best team out on the field, it is clear that win maximization does not completely describe the actions taken by owners. As we will see below, few teams in the NFL lose money from year to year and the exponential growth in franchise values does not suggest a situation in which franchises compete away all of their profits. Moreover, examiners of the win-maximizing hypothesis suggest a likely outcome for a league dominated by win-maximizing teams will be the eventual destruction of competitive balance and inviability of poorer market teams, an outcome which has not manifest in the NFL where competitive parity has reigned supreme. On the other hand, few teams, regardless of profitability, seem to be content to remain in the cellars of their sports from year to year and so winning must factor into the decision-making somewhere. Thus, the answer as to whether the profit-maximizing or win-maximizing model describes the NFL is somewhat inconclusive, though the author would suggest that, on the spectrum of possibilities, NFL owners are more profit-conscious than win-conscious.

Keywords: Supra Note; National Football League; Professional Sport; Professional Football; National Basketball Association (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:semchp:978-1-4419-6290-4_16

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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4419-6290-4_16

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