Windy City Gridiron
It’s playoff time, baby! The Chicago Bears have their first home playoff game in 7 years, and lo and behold, the Green Bay Packers happen to be the team that falls to the Bears’ opponent on the bracket. It’s only the third time the Bears and Packers will meet in the postseason, and they are tied at 1 in postseason matchups and tied at 1 for this season’s matchups. It’s officially the rubber match between the NFL’s premier franchises!
To get you set for this one, we sat down with Justis Mosqueda from Acme Packing Co. (SB Nation’s Green Bay Packers site) to get the Packers’ perspective on this one.
1. Let’s just cut through the fat: Do you think Matt LaFleur is coaching for his job on Saturday? If he’s let go, do you think John Harbaugh would be at the top of Green Bay’s wish list?
Long answer that takes a lot of explaining, but I do not.
NFL teams operate to make money, but not to make a profit in this era. This has caused spending on players and non-players to go up big time, despite it not really being financially smart from an ROI standpoint. Unfortunately, the Packers haven’t attracted the same volume of non-football events at the stadium that other clubs are tapping into (which is a big deal from a cash flow perspective), and they can’t ever tap into the franchise valuation (they can’t ever sell, and that’s where the real money is).
The primary driver of spend right now is speculative growth of franchise valuation. It took the NFL until 2014 to get its first billion-dollar franchise sale (the Buffalo Bills). That was 95 years into the league. San Francisco’s club was just valued at $8.5 billion a decade later. Inflation moved from 2014 to 2025…but it sure didn’t move that fast. That’s why the ultra-rich and private equity are bending over backwards to get into this league.
The Packers added $76 million to their “rainy day fund” (what they make post-expenses, even after selling out every game) last year, which sounds like a lot…until you compare it to the valuations. If you bought the Packers at the 49ers’ valuation (it might be less because of the cost of living, etc., in the Bay Area, but not by like 25% or anything), it would take the rainy day fund 114 years to match a franchise valuation. So why are owners so eager to buy such expensive investments that have such poor ROI? Speculative franchise valuation growth! They’re buying the team not to be a business; they’re buying it because one day someone will pay them X times more for it. These are the most expensive Pokémon cards (or insert whatever other collectible you want here) in the world. The goal is to make money (so you don’t have to tap into ownership’s cash flow, essentially to do no harm) but not make a profit (because investing money back into the franchise makes...
