If you don't know what a term means I guess that's always what it becomes an example of. The players seem to disagree with the % but not the existence of the term... Incremental revenue is the increase in new revenue over prior revenue per season.
I presume it has something to do with how under the pre 2006 formula owners would not be sharing with players any revenue flowing from luxury boxes and club seating or revenues from local media and advertising deals and naming rights deals or concessions or parking, let alone new revenue increases, and now they are sharing it all. Because what created those revenue streams wasn't what the players did on the field, it was what the owners individually or collectively invested in and were being increasingly asked to privately fund and assume the debt service on - stadium renovations and new builds, as well as expanding their partnerships and presence on local radio, television, internet websites.
They had to come up with a formula to share some of that oh, what shall we call it...incremental revenue with owner partners who were not in a position to generate additional revenue streams in order for them to be in position to financially keep up competitively. Otherwise just 9 of them could make it impossible to get any deal done. The players insinuated and then leveraged themselves into the same position by threatening to walk away from the table and trigger a permanently uncapped future on the heels of that debate if they didn't get to share the same revenue (TR) as the partners at the same rate they'd already achieved based on a smaller pie (DGR).
In the CBA and owners' revenue sharing agreement, the revenues to which you refer -- those from streams which are not pooled by the owners, but are part of the TR from which the cap is derived -- are called local revenues or non-shared revenues. So what you're saying, is that incremental revenues is yet a third term for them?
Additionally, the Total Revenues from which the players get their cut (minus the $1 billion) are defined in the CBA as revenues "arising from the performance of players in NFL football games." This includes the additional streams you name above and suggested are not created by what the players did on the field. I have to agree with the implication of the CBA's definition - luxury boxes, endorsement and sponsorship deals, local media revenues, all of these properties have value solely because of the attraction the players provide on the field. (Except, of course, for when people come to the stadium to see a MLS match or Justin Beiber concert, and accordingly, the players don't get a dime from that.)
Also, most of the revenues you suggest the owners are incurring debt service on entail only the sale of rights. Even things like concessions and parking can be sold as rights -- Aramark pays the team a lump sum, provides and manages the sale of all the concessions, and pockets the proceeds. So between the $1 billion off the top and the fact that the local taxpayers usually go halves on the teams' largest expenditure, if the owners want the NFLPA to take this incurred debt service seriously in negotiations, they're going to have to compromise on the disclosure of financial records.
The players contend that the $1B writeoff which was intended to pay for expenses like league contributions to stadium construction and renovation and building the NFLN and operating a league (it doesn't flow to owners, the league controls it and the NFLPA has oversight on how it is spent) should be counted against the owners share even though they personally individually never see it unless it is loaned to them for a project approved to grow overall revenue. The owners disagree on including it in the formula on the same basis the players argue for including it - it doesn't flow directly to them ($1B divided by 32) either.
The mistake the owners made was not calling Upshaw's bluff in 2006. The mistake the union made is believing that meant they never would... Teams seem to be looking for givebacks totalling somewhere between the going rate to tag a nasty OLG or sign an aging DE who occupies two blockers... At a time when the average team's annual debt service alone is roughly the per season cost of just signing Peyton Manning into his dotage.
I really don't think you're right about the NFLPA having oversight on any league expenditures, let alone the allocation of 11% of the leagues annual revenue. One of the sticking points of the negotiations is that the owners don't feel that they should be obligated to show the NFLPA the accounting of how that money's been spent, so it would be odd if they'd previously let the union tell them how they should spend it.
Additionally, I think whether the $1 billion "flows directly to the owners" or not is a matter of fiscal semantics. It pays for league expenses that otherwise would devolve to the owners. What does it matter if it doesn't go into their pockets, but instead keeps them from having to pay for something out of pocket? And as for not counting as part of the formula -- that's another misleading game of semantics. Even if you don't count it as part of the owners' share, it still needs to be counted as NFL revenue.
Finally, there's another, more compelling reason why it should be counted as part of the owners' revenue -- because the things that it pay for directly increases the owners' wealth. The owner owns the franchise, and when you spend money on the franchise, you increase its value. A new stadium can increase the value of its franchise by 35%. An owner's franchise is a tangible asset and appreciation of this asset is the primary means in which a team owner increases his wealth, and has been since the beginning of the NFL. In the last 10 or so years, the average value of a franchise has grown by more than 350%. They've more than tripled the value of their primary asset.
So not only does this money pay for expenditures that would otherwise be the owners' commitments, the owners own the value of the things it purchases -- I have a hard time seeing their argument to not have it counted as theirs during negotiations.
