How Do NFL Owners Affect Team Performance?

A commonality throughout professional football is that teams and their owners love new and enormous stadiums. In the 1950’s and the early days of professional football, stadiums were privately owned playing facilities designed to stay away from public finance (Swindell, Rosentraub, 1998, p. 11). Soon enough, with the growth in popularity of football, it became more common for teams to utilize resources of the state and local government and build publicly funded facilities (Swindell, Rosentraub, 1998, p. 11). NFL Teams can now “convince” the public to pay for the multi-million dollar facilities that they want even though it could have a negative impact on the community. Owners can do this by threatening to leave, expressing economic potential, and promoting the effects on team performance. Ever since the rise of professional football, teams and their cities have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on elaborate stadiums without substantial proof that it is worth the investment. Through empty threats and propaganda from NFL teams, owners are able to convince mayors and city residents that tax dollars should be spent on these facilities’ rather than more appropriate alternatives.
How the NFL Convinces
NFL teams use many techniques …show more content…
In 1995 the Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell announced that he was going to move his team to Baltimore mostly because his dissatisfaction with Cleveland Stadium (Leone, 1997, p. 473). Modell didn’t like sharing a stadium with the Indians especially when his company Stadium Corporation paid a large rent to the stadium every year (Leone, 1997, p. 475). Once the Indians got their own stadium not too much longer after Modell shared his displeasure, Modell soon found that the Indians were allowing his companies’ rent investment to thrive. After the Indians moved to their new stadium, Modell lost upwards of $20 million, and the move to Baltimore now became a financial decision (Leone, 1997, p.