By Harrison Done
The NFL, or National Football League, is the most profitable sports league in the United States and by far the wealthiest sports league in the world, generating almost $15 billion in revenue annually. With such an enormous sports business, every economic practice is used extensively throughout every aspect of this business; one of the most prominent and simple ones is supply and demand. The practice of supply and demand is used constantly, both outside the league, with owners supplying entertainment and spectators demanding purchases, and inside the league, with owners' demand for valuable players and those player's supply of skills and experience. The primary thing owners supply is access to football content, meaning games, news about the sport, recent dramatic elements of the players, coaches, and owner's lives, as well as history and statistics related to the game. Owners ration their supply for in-person viewing by charging for seats in the stadium and access to television viewing by selling their broadcasting rights to the highest-paying company. Then, the buyers or spectators demand live events for entertainment, and some networks demand television rights for specific games or time slots. One very controversial example was last year when the NFL sold all their Thursday Night Prime Time games to Amazon to be exclusively streamed on Prime Video. However, this practice happens extensively behind the scenes with the players and owners directly. Athletes are the key labor source for professional football and want the financial payoff for the physical work and risk they undertake. Owners demand "labor services" from their athletes and compensate them with signing bonuses, regular pay, deferred pay, performance bonuses, training opportunities, and many more. There are plenty of examples of this happening throughout the NFL, with players dealing with trades and free agency deals. To sum it up, the NFL might be one of the biggest businesses in the United States, but its practices can still be simplified and brought down to the most basic economic concepts. It shows that no matter how big or small, all businesses, and even people, must follow the fundamental laws of economics at every point on their way to success.
Sources
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https://schoolhouseteachers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Football-Economics-Week-Three-the-market-for-the-game.pptx