The NFL is in crisis. After attaining a record audience of 111 million viewers worldwide for this year’s Super Bowl and increasing their UK audience for the game to 3.5 million, the league has shut down. It is in a ‘lockout’, the ins and outs of which I will attempt to explain.
The American sports leagues are run collectively by the owners of each team but they are forbidden from changing the financial rules without the consent of the Players’ Union via a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) which expires every few years. The situation is unlike that in Europe because of an antitrust law which forces companies to collectively bargain with players’ unions rather then simply cooperate as businesses. The process is a not-so-simple game of give and take. The owners introduced salary caps to help save money and even out competition; subsequently the union fought for a minimum salary to ensure no players were underpaid. The league took the majority of the television revenue generated and the players followed by implementing free agency, which allowed the players greater freedom of movement and power over where they could play. The problem is simply who gets what.
The current situation is that the previous CBA has expired and the league has locked the players out, meaning no players may contact coaches or receive their cheques. The situation has barely moved since the 12th of March, nearly two months since the agreement expired. While the amount of money at stake is enormous – a reported $9bn sum is to be divided – the bickering and verbal jousting has caused many to lose faith in the sport. At least greed and selfishness in the Premiership is restricted to single players or clubs. In this case, the whole image of the NFL is at stake: a league which has built itself around the image of tough, brutal but hard-working men is embroiled in a squabble of playground proportions.
The owners claim that they are in bad financial shape but refuse to show the players any proof, while the players have united under DeMaurice Smith, a no-nonsense negotiator whose aggressive style will surely only aggravate matters further. The eventual result will be positive – the CBA will get agreed – but at what cost to the league? The longer they take, the longer players will grumble about not getting paid and fans will miss more games. American football is a favourite sport of mine but I am unbelievably grateful to the structure of our sporting system. The greed displayed by both parties will only succeed in turning more fans away.
