Revenue Sharing.

[FRPLG]

Originally Posted by mooby

some teams aren't in a bigger market like dallas, or philadelphia, or washington. this is just an idea that they are thinking of, it hasn't actually been approved yet. it's so teams like the browns get a little money to get off the ground, because they don't make as much because cleveland doesn't have a large market, plus the team isn't that good. teams that make the playoffs more often make more money. i know washington doesn't support that statement, but that's because we are in a larger market.

Yes and no. The league has used revenue sharing for decades. Since Pete Rozelle became commissioner the focus has been on parity in the league because it is believed that the best way to be successful as a league (and therefore all the teams) is to the make the league the product and not the individual players and teams. It is believed that having parity allows fans to always have hope and therefore sucks them in better than the other sports. It has clearly worked as professional football has gone from an enigmatic fringe league in the 50's to certainly the most popular sport in the US while passing both baseball("America's Pastime") and bastketball by leaps and bounds.
The revenue sharing they currently use is based mostly on TV revenues. See in football the teams do not sign their own tv distribution rights but particpate in the league wide distribution contract which is of course billions of dollars. All this money is divided equally among the teams each year. The amount available plus some other stuff determines each year's salary cap by the way. The other stuff is generally league generated team revenues and the like. In baseball each team does it owns tv deal and basketball has a similar structure as football. Because the NBA plays so many games though the value of the TV contracts is actually less as the supply of games far exceeds the demand whereas in footballl the opposite is true.
The issue that is on the table now is the individal team generated revenues. Stuff like concessions, team apparel, and anything that is generated through individual team marketing. This stuff is not included in the revenue sharing. Te result being that some teams spend upward of 80% of their revenues(total) on salary while others spend maybe 65%. Successful marketing teams like DC and Dallas( you can debate why they are more successful. Snyder and Jones would say they do a better job of marketing while the smaller market teams would say they simply hav a bigger market and therefore more opportunity.) end up spedning near the 65 mark and the smaller market teams complain that it makes it more difficult to sompete. For a league where everyone is supposed to be on the same monetary level this an obvious problem.
I would say that in general I think Snyder probably does the absolute best job of marketing in the league. I don't think it is even close because he has a team that has struggled for over a decade and has turned it into the most valuable sports franchise in the world.
In the end they'e going to have to start including at least some portion of the team revenues simply becuase it is the way the league became successful and to abandon that now would be totally retarded. It seems completely unamerican to me but is has worked for sure and I can't see why they would stop now.