Over the past several years, owning a professional sports franchise has become more of a status symbol in the world of the filthy rich rather than an investment that would make you money.
The NFL however is a different story.
The United States certainly is a football driven country (in terms of sports). Many believe that it has taken the claim of the nations national pastime, a title baseball has had for as long as I can remember.
With that said, generally owners within the NFL enjoy a profit at the end of the season rather than numbers in the red.
This seems true if you’re any team other than the Detroit Lions.
According to Yahoo! Sports’ The Dish, the Detroit Lions were the only NFL franchise to actually lose money in 2010. Furthermore the reports states a typical NFL teams value has grown 8 percent over the last half decade. The value of the Lions though has gone down 3 percent during the past five years.
If you look at the other end of the spectrum, the New York Giants team value went up an astonishing 33 percent over the past five years while the New England Patriots made $93 million dollars on ticket sales alone.
To top this off and piggy back of a story yesterday, Forbes Magazine recently ranked William Clay Ford, Sr. as the worst owner in the National Football League beating out the likes of the late Al Davis.
Ref: Forbes Magazine, Yahoo! Sports, FanPop.com (image)
