Big Money in NFL Stadiums, How do they make it?

In this post I wanted to research how much NFL stadiums profit each year from tickets, sponsorships, and merchandise sales. The article I will use if one from Forbes Titled NFL Stadiums: By the Numbers written by Kurt Badenhausen who is a sports business writer for Forbes.

Dallas Cowboys Stadium -http://www.viracon.com/

Nowadays NFL stadiums are starting to look like spaceships from the outside rather than stadiums, so I wanted to see how much a new stadium would benefit a teams value. With NFL teams being known as some of the most wealthy sports teams in all of professional sports I found the astonishing numbers that some teams make of their stadium each year. The Dallas Cowboys are known as the most profitable team right now valued at $2.3 billion. The Cowboys “from sponsorships and advertising signage last season” in their stadium, “earned $100 million”(Badenhausen). Not to mention just one year before that there owner Jerry Jones “inked his 25-year, $500 million naming rights deal with AT&T”. This amount of money is almost unheard of for a team to make that much from just one branch of their business in a year. If you look at it as a business point of view it is crazy that you can make that much money from only one part of your business. Premium and club seating also sets some NFL franchises apart from other professional teams. In the article Badenhausen brings up that  “the Cowboys, Washington Redskins and New York Giants all generate at least $75 million annually from club seats and luxury suites”. Premium and club seating are usually your wealthier side of fans, either last second ticket buyers or season ticket holders. Either way the comfort of luxury while watching your favorite sports team is hard to beat. While these large money making numbers aren't all the same for every team, “like the Raiders and Buffalo Bills generate less than $20 million in sponsor revenue”, which isn't crazy but still is not bad. But definitely the stadiums that NFL teams play in does affect their profit and how the teams are evaluated and the NFL all together.

New York Giants Stadium- http://news.psu.edu

Next Blog Post: In my next blog post I plan on researching deeper into how much NFL players are paid and how that affects their teams value.