The loss of a full NFL season would cost $2 billion

Frisco City, Alabama
May 11, 2011



$2 billion!!! That’s how much the loss of a full season would cost the NFL and its 32 teams.
The figure comes from a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report which cites the cost for the league and its teams to “maintain a state of readiness” during the 2011 season.
In order to be ready you need to pay your employees, which means that if the 2011 season (and the revenue it would have generated) doesn’t happen, that $2 billion becomes a sunk cost.

“We’re going to maintain a readiness to play a full season, and there’s a cost to it,” Eric Grubman, the league’s executive vice president for business operations, said in a meeting with members of the Associated Press Sports Editors at the NFL headquarters. “It is incredibly expensive to maintain the state of readiness without the revenue coming in.”

Each team is free to decide its own staffing and pay levels, according to Grubman. The league office, meanwhile, has cut pay by 12% across the board for “rank and file” jobs, and commissioner Roger Goodell has cut his pay to $1 a year.