Coronavirus Is Pushing the NFL Toward a Financial Cliff
The league’s revenue could fall as much as $4 billion in 2020—and tensions with the players are surfacing over how to mitigate the shortfall that could gut teams’ rosters
Every NFL team has shaped its roster, planned its future and designed its strategy for winning a Super Bowl around the same basic premise: America’s richest sports league would continue to get richer.
The coronavirus pandemic has burst the league’s $16 billion revenue bubble.
NFL revenue could fall as much as $4 billion in 2020, depending on factors such as how many fans can attend games, executives familiar with the matter said. The resulting drop in the salary cap for 2021—a figure that’s calculated off the prior year’s revenue—could exceed $80 million, or more than 40% of the current cap at $198 million.
That would have a disastrous impact across the league. The only way for teams to meet the dramatically lower cap would be to gut their rosters.
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I was going to add this article to the COVID protocol thread, but thought the economic impact of the pandemic on the NFL was worthy of its own subject.
It's going to be very interesting to see how this all plays out. It's just the beginning.