Quote:
Originally Posted by LoneWolf
Here's the rub. Football and all professional sports have always been businesses. Football fans are paying customers and teams exist and have always existed to turn a profit. Lamar Hunt was a businessman. It just seems different because the numbers are bigger, but if these teams never made money the league would no longer exist.
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Stakeholder vs shareholder... or specifically for the NFL, the product and fans vs money. Yeah, there's always the business side of it and they have to make their money, but it can make a HUGE difference whether your focus is in the right place or solely on the money.
And actually, if the focus had only been about money back then, it probably wouldn't exist today. Like ciaomichael said, they were just fighting for relevance... and when you're fighting for customers, that's where your focus is at. You're just trying to make the product the best it can be and attract fans.
Well, now that they have all the customers they'll ever need and make eleventy billion dollars a year, they could focus on the game and fans, but they choose to focus on making 5% more money next year.
It's nothing new... maybe Lamar dreamed of making millions, but back then his passion had to be football, not money. Just look at the differences between Sporting's ownership and any NFL team, or most any (relatively) small company vs most any huge company.