THE GROSS FOOTBALL PRODUCT
REPORTED BY DORIS BURKE
March 14, 2011
So just what are NFL owners and players fighting over? The answer, of course, is money—$9.3 billion in revenue, to be specific. While the league won't divulge exactly how that figure breaks down (a sticking point in the ongoing labor talks), SI and FORTUNE have crunched the numbers to provide an unprecedented look at the game's GFP (gross football product), a figure roughly equal to the GDP of Macedonia.
• PLAYER SALARIES
Though teams today are serving up a smaller portion of the revenue pie to players than they were a decade ago, the relief is relative. The percentage of revenue going to player salaries more than doubled from 1980 to 2000:
[The following text appears within a chart. Please see hardcopy or PDF for actual chart.]
PERCENTAGE OF GROSS REVENUE DEDICATED TO SALARIES
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%