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NFL's Non-Profit Status


Zeus

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I know this issue is debated here from time to time. I tripped over this article which delves into the history of how the NFL got its non-profit status and also notes that our close personal friend Roger is far and away the highest paid non-profit executive anywhere.

Flame on ...

Roger Goodell Made $44 Million Last Year. The NFL Is Still a Non-Profit
 
Roger Goodell makes more per year than Tom Brady and Peyton Manning combined, yet no one ever paid a dollar for a ticket to see him do anything.

Roger Goodell is the biggest parasite in the history of organized athletics.

It's insane.
 
I know this issue is debated here from time to time. I tripped over this article which delves into the history of how the NFL got its non-profit status and also notes that our close personal friend Roger is far and away the highest paid non-profit executive anywhere.

Flame on ...

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/r.../blogs/news/roger-goodell-king-of-non-profits

Yeah, on its face it seems quite absurd. The NFL distributes most of its income to its 32 teams and those teams are not exempt from taxes. The league office is tax exempt but the league claims very little revenue (due to the face that they redistribute it to the teams). In fact, the league claimed a loss a couple of years ago so that would be zero tax revenue for the people. Even if Congress were to strip the league of its non-profit status, taxpayers would not see any money.

The good news is that the NFL makes a ton of money and nearly all of it is taxable. The bad news is that Roger Goodell is an insufferable stooge.
 
What NY pat fan said above. This is a non-issue. If the tax exemption were revoked, they would just restructure as a partnershi, LLC, or other entity that does not pay tax, with the teams as members.
 
I was thinking about the absurdity of paying Goodell 44 million dollars a year... how is he worth that much cash?? When they dump this butthole Jets fan, perhaps they might find anther Executive Director for about 25% of that salary...

He has been in hiding all week...
 
Roger Goodell makes more per year than Tom Brady and Peyton Manning combined, yet no one ever paid a dollar for a ticket to see him do anything.

Roger Goodell is the biggest parasite in the history of organized athletics.

It's insane.
If given the chance I'm sure a great many of us would pay to watch him do horribly unpleasant things.
 
Important to note that the league office is the only one tax exempt, not the NFL as a whole. Any tax takings would be pretty slim, since most of the income is from dues and most outlays are for salary, overhead, and logistics.

I think I understand what AJ was saying in the previous thread, about the owners really controlling the amount they're paying into the league office, though I'll note that having the league office provides benefits beyond just pooling money and paying a toadie like Roger, so it's a wash as to whether they would require lower dues of each individual owner even if there was no tax-exemption.

The more important thing to note is that something like 70% of the capital is provided by the public, with a lot of teams having ultimately profited from public stadium subsidies (they received more in subsidies the stadium cost). Only the Patriots, Jets, and Giants subsidized most of their stadium construction through private funds. You can argue that this should require some sort of social obligation, such as we're seeing here with the Adrian Petersons and Ray Rices of the world, but without strings attached you're looking at a very similar situation that we see in the banking and agriculture industries and many others where risk and cost are socialized and profits are privatized.
 
Hard to see Goodell survive much longer. 44 million salary is insane.
 
Hard to see Goodell survive much longer. 44 million salary is insane.


So was Goodell's insistence on using the morals clause to serve as a second judge of every crime, but that didn't get his trifling ass fired. The damage control's been done, and the media has already begun spinning the situation in such a way as to keep Goodell out of most of it. Goodell will probably survive this.
 
I was thinking about the absurdity of paying Goodell 44 million dollars a year... how is he worth that much cash?? When they dump this butthole Jets fan, perhaps they might find anther Executive Director for about 25% of that salary...

He has been in hiding all week...

Say what you will about his performance but the Buffalo Bills just sold for over a billion dollars. From the owners perspective he has been doing his job of increasing the value of their brands very well.

From my point of view, I don't think that he is the cause of the steady increase of brand value. I am sure fantasy football did a dozen times more than Goodell.
 
Hard to see Goodell survive much longer. 44 million salary is insane.

That's 1.3 millions per year from every owner. In the big scheme of things I am not sure if it is that much to them.
 
So was Goodell's insistence on using the morals clause to serve as a second judge of every crime, but that didn't get his trifling ass fired. The damage control's been done, and the media has already begun spinning the situation in such a way as to keep Goodell out of most of it. Goodell will probably survive this.
would be interested to the result of the Rice-tape gate. Any hint of those tapes being seen in NFL HQ and its buh bye Rog.
 
Well, if the league didn't have non-profit status, teams would get taxed twice. Almost all revenue streams for the NFL go through the league office. So it would be taxed at the league level. When they dispersed the money to each team, it would get taxed again.

If the league ever loses its non-profit status, it would destroy the league. It would force teams to make their own TV deals and marketing deals and there would be big market and small market teams like it is in MLB. You would have teams like the Cowboys and Redskins having payrolls for $500 million and teams like Jacksonville having payrolls of $50 million. Revenue sharing would go away within a few years (the life of the current TV contracts) because it would be more cost effective for big market teams to cut their own direct deals to not be taxed twice.

Goodell's salary is another issue. But I fully support the non-profit status for the NFL. Otherwise, the league will crumble.
 
It's not like replacing Goodell would do a world of good. He is, and always has been, nothing but the owners' patsy. He may have his own harebrained ideas - expansion to the UK, for example, seems to be to him as expanding to the south was for Gary Bettman in the NHL - but most of what he does is at the behest of his overlords.
 
As been said. It's non profit because the money goes to the teams, where it is taxed. This is such a non issue that people, who have no idea what they are talking about, flame up on just because they see the words "non-profit" and don't research why they are non-profit. I think it's reasonable that the NFL is non-profit. I also don't see any problem in Goodells salary in relation to the NFL being non profit. $44m isn't really that much either.

People love to hate on Goodell. But he is hired by the owners. Even if we had another commisioner we wouldn't, nor should we, have a league where people can hit each other in the head as hard as possible. It just isn't possible with regards to the info about concussion problems that we have today.

Not to say that I love or like Goodell. I think he has ****ed up real bad on his judge/juror/executioner style player discpline.
 
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Well, if the league didn't have non-profit status, teams would get taxed twice. Almost all revenue streams for the NFL go through the league office. So it would be taxed at the league level. When they dispersed the money to each team, it would get taxed again.

If the league ever loses its non-profit status, it would destroy the league. It would force teams to make their own TV deals and marketing deals and there would be big market and small market teams like it is in MLB. You would have teams like the Cowboys and Redskins having payrolls for $500 million and teams like Jacksonville having payrolls of $50 million. Revenue sharing would go away within a few years (the life of the current TV contracts) because it would be more cost effective for big market teams to cut their own direct deals to not be taxed twice.

The NBA does revenue sharing without a tax-exempt league office. Profit is taxed, rather than revenue, so a for-profit league office facilitating the money movement necessary for revenue sharing wouldn't pay taxes on that money, only the ultimate end-destination for said money would.
 
The NBA does revenue sharing without a tax-exempt league office. Profit is taxed, rather than revenue, so a for-profit league office facilitating the money movement necessary for revenue sharing wouldn't pay taxes on that money, only the ultimate end-destination for said money would.

Each NBA team has their own television package where most of their revenues are generated. The NBA national television deals are not anything like the NFL where 100% of the TV deals are negotiated through the NFL. I don't think the NBA would survive as is with a for profit league office and all the TV deals negotiated for all the teams at the NBA league office level.

BTW, corporations are all taxed on profits, not revenues. If you make a million dollars in revenue and your expenses are more than a million as a company, you don't pay taxes. But there are issues with a central entity collecting the money and passing it along to another entity. It can create issues.

But I am no CPA. So I could be wrong about all this.
 
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would be interested to the result of the Rice-tape gate. Any hint of those tapes being seen in NFL HQ and its buh bye Rog.

With the possible exception of Joker, there's nobody on this site that wants Roger gone more than I do, nor (I believe) is there anyone who's wanted him gone for as long as I have. I hope they can his ass while I'm on my way to the grocery, in about 5 minutes.

I just see what's already happening, and the narrative is already changing from "Roger's full of it" to "Wow, the NFL has some problems they need to fix". The first one gets Goodell canned. The second one gets a bunch of women new titles, and gets Roger to come down even harder on things he shouldn't be looking at in the first place.
 
Each NBA team has their own television package where most of their revenues are generated. The NBA national television deals are not anything like the NFL where 100% of the TV deals are negotiated through the NFL. I don't think the NBA would survive as is with a for profit league office and all the TV deals negotiated for all the teams at the NBA league office level.

BTW, corporations are all taxed on profits, not revenues. If you make a million dollars in revenue and your expenses are more than a million as a company, you don't pay taxes. But there are issues with a central entity collecting the money and passing it along to another entity. It can create issues.

I understand the issue with teams negotiating their own TV deals, but the NBA does negotiate some of the more lucrative national TV deals (ABC/ESPN, TNT), and it deals with revenue sharing without "issues" - though I can imagine the potential complications arising from moving money around in such a manner. I just don't think it's impossible, and nor do I think that it would destroy the NFL, especially with a salary cap.
 


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