>The Packers are a publicly owned team. So everyone knows how much profit they make. If your statement is true, then you should be able to back it using the Packers. But you can not.
What I said was "if you consider the cost". The Packers have an unusual business model in that they are a publicly owned company with over over 4,750,000 shares outstanding. The shares are of fixed value and no dividends are paid, so as long as they break even everyone is happy. They made a profit $20M on revenues of $248M. I agree that's pretty good, but bear in mind they are not paying off long term debt. Lambeau Field was built in 1957 and remodeled in 2003. The costs for the stadium are low. So what you have is a team with low operating costs and no need to recoup the purchase price of the team. Also consider that if salaries increase by 10% the profit drops to about $7M, so the margins are relatively slim. In the article you cited, salaries rose 13% the year before. To my original point, Robert Kraft purchased the Patriots for $172M, and the team is now worth about $1B, a 530% return. That's where the big payoff is, but in order to realize that large a return he would have to sell the team. The numbers don't reflect any interest charges Kraft may have incurred so the cost basis may have been greater than the actual purchase price. (And conversely Authur Blank, owner of the Falcons, has seen a 7% return on his investment after 8 years, which isn't much). I have no idea what the annual profit for the Patriots is, but I'd venture a guess that they are more successful than the average team and therefore have a greater profit. We don't know what the profit of a cellar-dweller with a big mortgage is, but I suspect it's not good. When an owner takes out a whopping mortgage to finance a team or stadium (such as Jerry Jones borrowing $1B for Cowboys stadium) the owner assumes all of the risk, not the players. I don't think the owners have any obligation to open their books to player scrutiny. The owner where I work certainly doesn't open his books to me.
