Dallas Cowboys Round Up Riches; Top-Valued NFL Franchise
How much is your favorite gridiron team worth off the field?
Sept. 1, 2007 Special to ABCNEWS.com — -- The architect of modern-stadium economics and owner of the Dallas Cowboys will unleash a $1 billion stadium (financed with a mix of private and public money) in 2009 that will have other NFL owners begging for mercy.
Thanks to their new stadium, which Jerry Jones will operate, the Cowboys are now worth $1.5 billion, putting them atop the NFL team value rankings for the first time in eight years and making Dallas the most valuable sports franchise in the world. The owners of teams like the Buffalo Bills, Atlanta Falcons and Jacksonville Jaguars have been moaning that the several million dollars they get each year in aggregate from richer teams like Dallas, Washington and New England is insufficient to keep them competitive. Well, wait until Ralph Wilson, Arthur Blank and Wayne Weaver see the Cowboys' new stadium.
The new monster facility in Arlington, Texas, has over 200 suites leasing for more than $350,000 a year. Stadium sponsorships should bring in another $50 million. These numbers are important, because in the NFL, national television, ticket and licensing revenue is shared equally among the 32 teams, but the home team keeps all the suite and stadium sponsorship money.
Yes, the NFL's salary cap limits player salaries to 57% of league revenue. But teams can end-run the cap by paying big signing bonuses that get amortized over the life of the contract. With their new stadium, the Cowboys will have a lot more money than their rivals to lure players with fat signing bonuses -- and Jones, who is already worth more than $1 billion, will see his bank account swell.
Sure, New York's Giants and Jets are going to share a new $1.3 billion stadium scheduled to open in 2010. But it is unlikely they will get as much money splitting revenue from an open-roof stadium in New Jersey that Jones will get from a retractable-roof building in Texas. Jones also has less debt tied to his stadium because of $325 million in taxpayer subsidies. The Giants and Jets got nothing from taxpayers for their stadium.
