The NFL has been confirmed as the Great cash register of American sport. On Friday a new season begins with the financial data of the previous one still hot: it invoiced 13,840 million dollars, equally distributed to 432 million per franchise. 7.5% more than the previous season. Charean Williams clarifies in the NBC that the first time this data was known, 18 years ago, Franchise income was 138 million …
Income includes audiovisual rights, sponsorships, shared income and other businesses. Not international markets. And there is precisely where the NFL wants to hurry. The Economist It has echoed “the growing global ambitions of American football” and stresses that the NFL “will play more parties abroad in 2025 than never before.” The movement is not just quantitative: the league “His way of promoting abroad has changed.” Until now, the teams could be promoted abroad, but the income went to the common box of the League, but since 2022, the NFL leaves the teams “to request the right to consider countries as local markets, which allows them to conserve income.”
A Ben Fischer analysis in the Sport Business Journal He concludes that, “three years later, the income of the global market program remains minimal.” Fischer argues that «the teams always knew that building their brands abroad It would be a thorough processand that realistic expectations in the short term are better understood with metrics as followers in social networks than with money ». Even so, he concludes, “The threshold for income distribution is very low”, and that “some team managers affirm that their income potential abroad could be greater with a better league policy.” The key is in the matches, but «these are events operated by the League. Some teams claim that it will cost them to develop a solid club business abroad Without greater sponsorship in the stadium, the party days, the media and the inventory of entries that can control themselves ».
While the machinery of management, Clubs are already throwing their networks. The first official season outside the United States dates back to October 2, 2005, but was in a very close market: the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City. By the way, 103,467 spectators … Two years later the NFL International Series were invented, with London as the first host. In 2016 he returned to Mexico City, in 2022 several German cities were pointed out and last year he touched Brazil. This will be Dublin’s turn … and Madrid.
November 16, Miami Dolphins and Washington Commanders will meet at Santiago Bernabéu. The involvement of Real Madrid in the business has its crumb especially after championing the refusal of most Spanish clubs to which FC Barcelona and Villarreal play a Spanish football league match precisely in Miami, the Dolphins headquarters. Madrid has come to announce that it will ask UEFA, FIFA and CSD to prohibit it. The main promoter of the party, LaLiga President Javier Tebas, recently said in the RNE sports board program: “Then the NFL comes here and we are delighted.”
Against analogy between both movements can be argued fundamentally By three ways. The first, more technical, has to do with the channel chosen by LaLiga: according to the teams against the game and the soccer playersall those involved have not been consulted. In this sense, it can be considered that it is the first movements and, if the practice of playing official matches of the national competition outside of Spain was consolidated, the machinery would be greased.
The second way is sports. Real Madrid wields a third issue: the game in Miami would break the equality of the league format because Barça would play in neutral terrain instead of a visitor. They have not seemed bad, however, that the Miami Dolphins, designated as premises in their party in Madrid, waste That factor in favor of the Washington Commanders.
And here the third argument enters, more in the background, even philosophical. The American Sports Conception It differs quite from the European. Against the Barça and Villarreal party in Miami, it has come to cry out nothing less than the European commissioner of Youth, Culture and Sports, Glenn Micallef, which came to say that, more than an “innovation”, It would be a “betrayal” to hobbies. American fans are less sentimental: they go to the stadium to enjoy an leisure experience.
The Washington Commanders who will play in November at Bernabéu were born in 1932 in Boston. They were called Boston Braves until they decided to change the name for that of Redskins. Years later, the owners took the team to the US capital, and in 2020 the Redskins were removed to be called Commanders. Can you imagine that Barça’s directive It occurred to him to take the team to Madrid and rename it as real?
Of course, There are intermediate positions. Spanish football clubs are not, nor are they probably become, as focused on pure and hard business as those of the NFL. But we cannot deny your obvious financial aspect. In addition, some seem to forget that the melon has already opened with the dispute of an official competition, the Super Cup, in Saudi Arabia. In any case, it would not be bad to take advantage of the incursion of the NFL commercials in our country to learn from the best in the matter …
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