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I think there may be some confusion between gross profit and net profit here. Also, not only do different industries have a wide variance in gross and net margins, but where they are in the supply chain will result in different markups and margins too. The company that makes IC's has one profit structure, the contract company that makes the boards another, the brand name companies like Cisco and Hewlett Packard a separate %, the wholesale distributors work on miniscule profit margins, and the companies that finally sell the product to the end user another profit margin. All of those just mentioned may be considered to be in the IT industry, but all five of them have different labor costs as a percentage of revenue and all five of them have different expectations for a reasonable net profit percentage.
Bottom line is we can't compare the NFL's labor costs to revenue percentage, or net profit percentage to a company or industry we are familiar with and hold that up as proof that they are in good or bad shape.
Back to the original topic: as patsfaninpittsburgh pointed out, without knowing the cash flow and seeing the balance sheet, it's difficult to make a judgement. Expenditures being fully expensed rather than amortized would make a huge difference.
I also recall reading somewhere that a big reason for the Packers' drop in profits in 2009 was due to investments the club had; when the stock market went south their investments did too. Their profits were up a bit in last summer's financial statement but not back up to where they were in 2008. Until those investments start to rebound, perhaps it is not reasonable to expect earnings to return to the levels they were at a few years ago. Remove those paper losses and the financial picture of the team changes dramatically.
Granted the numbers the Packers had last year - a return of 3.8 cents on every dollar of revenue - are pretty low. With few exceptions, anything below 4% is not considered to be good. But one still needs to dig deeper to get a truly accurate picture of the financial well being of the team.
Your position (more info is needed) is essentially what the players are saying publicly.
Also, did you note the coincidental jump in the Sales and Marketing expense? I'd expect, for example, that the players would want to know why a $4.3 million expense turned into a $20.7 million expense in one year. You can't get that if the owners are only offering a 2 number "financial".
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