Sticky: NFL Lockout 101

In 2006 the 32 NFL team owners and the NFL Players Union signed a contract on how to split the annual revenue taken in by the sport. Back then the annual revenue was just over 6 BILLION dollars a year. The contract contained things such as how to handle a player when he reached the end of his contract with a team, creating a system called free agency. How the owners would get the first 1 Billion off the top to maintain facilities and stadiums. The players would get 60% of what was left and the owners would get 40%. But each of them also agreed to let some of their cut go to things such as medical plans, retirement benefits and rookie bonuses. Also the 4 preseason exhibition games, 16 regular season games and playoff system were set in this contract.

But there is a problem….

The root of all fun, or something...

Since the 2006 contract the annual revenue of the league has skyrocketed to over 9 BILLION dollars a year. The owners have been hit with many increases in the costs of doing business (construction, wages for workers, and rising food prices) while watching the players take the larger chuck of that 3 Billion dollar increase (60% or 1.8Billion to the players -vs- 40% or 1.2 billion to the owners) while incurring almost no increase in costs. 

Make it rain!

So the owners let the old contract expire and asked the players to agree to new terms, Primarily a rookie wage scale (The top picks from colleges every year keep getting bigger and bigger contracts many of witch are outlandish), going to 2 preseason exhibition games and 18 regular season games, and letting the owners take 2 Billion off the top. They argued that this would help reduce wasted player money and spread what is there out to more older and deserving players. The extra games would increase revenue, pushing the 9 billion annual intake up towards 10 Billion, and the extra billion the owners would take would be restricted to being spent on maintaining facilities and building new stadiums just like the first 1 billion they get now. As opposed to going right into their own pockets. 

NFL Owners

The Players argue that the increase in games would create more injuries and require more players per team negating the per player increase in total revenue. And the extra 1 billion off the top would drive their total salaries down from the current 4.8 billion a year down to 4.2 billion a year. And they don’t believe the increased number of games would truly push the revenue up enough to off set this difference.So they feel like the owners are going to far.

Players union response to the owners ideas

NOTE: The 4.8 billion per year is divided up to 32 teams, so each team gets 150 Million but they each have 52 players on a team so on AVERAGE they are making only 2.8 million each. (To put that in perspective Manchester United has a 194 million US dollars a year payroll and only 37 players so that’s an average of 5.2 million per player) 

Ya these guys average over 5 mill a year EACH

That is basically where we stand right now. The 2 sides could not find a middle ground of compromise. And lots of legal happenings are going on in front of several different courts and boards.