Yes, I was wrong. A part of the off the top credit to the owners has been for the construction of stadiums. Not all of it, but some of it. But that started in 2006 and only two or three stadiums have been built in that time.
But this CBA, they are reducing or eliminating the off the top credit. Word was when they report the framework of the CBA the week of the owner's meeting, the off the top credit was eliminated. This past week there was rumors that the owners re-introduced the off the top credit at about $500 million which is half of what it was in 2009.
As for player endorsements, I personally don't believe the owners deserve any part of it. But I also don't believe that the players deserve a percentage of an U2 concert in Gillette or the Revelotions box office either.
I feel the off the top credit was agreed to without the inclusion of non-football revenues and now the owners are reducing or eliminating this credit and the players want more of the revenues generated for things that were helped constructed for these activities. So they want to pay less for paying more.
As for players' endorsements, they are PARTNERS with the owners. That is what they have been saying to get a share of all the revenues. That means the brand of Peyton Manning is a partnership between him and the owners. The owners therefore, at least in theory, should get a percentage of whatever he makes off of his name or likeness.
You really cannot have it both ways. Either the players are employees or they are partners or "the product". If they are employees, they have no right to expect a percentage of virtually everything the owners makes. If they partners, a partnership goes both ways and the money generated should be shared both directions. If they are a product, the owners have the right to a percentage of everything the player makes on endorsements based on their play in the NFL.
Just for the record, four stadiums (serving 5 teams) have been built since '06, for the Colts, Cards, Cowboys and Giants/Jets. I know that the NFL's stadium fund contributed around 1/2 a billion dollars to the most recent two alone, and that at least at one point there was money being allocated to build a stadium in LA even before figuring out who was going to be playing there.
The strength of the players' claim to stadium revenue from non-NFL events is entirely conditional on the degree to which they continue to contribute to the stadium fund under the new CBA. If the new CBA essentially ends the expense credit for stadium construction, they ought to be prepared to accept a very limited amount of compensation, or be willing to forgo it entirely as one of the many gestures of good faith that will be necessary from both sides to get a deal done. If the new CBA continues their contribution, their expectation of compensation needs to be taken seriously.
In my original post on the subject, I never intended to express more than this kind of conditional support for this claim. I just was pointing out that something Florio was presenting as absurd on its face actually makes all the sense in the world, depending on how the negotiations go. If Kessler is trying to hold up negotiations over compensation for non-NFL events absent any plans for continuing player-side contributions, than Florio's characterization is right on... we just don't know the whole story yet.
As for your case for the owners' being entitled to a share of the players' endorsements... well, firstly, the players never asked to be treated like partners. The onus for that is entirely on the owners, and their desire for a salary cap to curb the growth in expenditure caused by the natural right to free agency that the players were going to win in court. If the players' salaries were determined entirely by their individual negotiations with their teams, they would be normal wage-paid employees. With their compensation made a function of the annual success of their collective venture with the league, they are more accurately described as entered into a limited partnership.
All of this is neither here nor there. Whether and to what degree the players are "partners" or "employees" is a byproduct determined by the negotiations, not a determining factor within the negotiations. They aren't being given a cut of all NFL revenue because they're partners, they're being given it because that's the price to get them to agree to setting an artificial cap on the market for their talents, and that ultimately makes them more like partners.
The question of whether the owners are entitled to a share of player endorsements is simply something else that could be negotiated. Sometimes partners do or don't share in proceeds from other ventures. The Beatles made Lennon famous, but he didn't owe any proceeds from his solo albums to Apple Corps unless he used material that McCartney had a hand in developing. There's nothing stopping the owners from requesting a share of the players' endorsements during negotiations, but they have no preceding entitlement to it, and they're running the risk of negotiating for something unenforceable. There are some rights that can't be waived by contract, and the right to profit off your own name and identity is one of them. (The old school Hollywood studios tried and failed to enforce contracts that entitled them to any money an actor made off the fame they achieved making movies under their exclusive studio contracts.)
That said, it's not like the majority of owners would ever think of trying to wrangle this from the players. First off, there are only a handful of players at any time who can make any serious money from endorsements, and these players are by definition the ones who wield the most clout in negotiating contracts. Competitive owners like Kraft don't want to diminish the value of their stars' endorsements because they know that they'll end up paying the difference in salary demands, and the only real change would be taking up more cap space, which is an appealing thought only to owners like the Browns and Bidwells, not the Krafts and Jones's.
