FORT BENNING, Ga., (Sept. 24, 2014) -- Commentary: 2 minute warning, THE NFL IS A NONPROFIT
The National Football League is considered a nonprofit organization. Wow.
The NFL reports an annual revenue of $10 billion and was categorized as a trade association in 1942 by the Internal Revenue Service.
According to CBS News' Erik Sherman, the NFL goes beyond the typical trade association category and has created a "revenue machine."
"(The NFL) developed a revenue machine through creating intellectual property, licensing logos and names for merchandising, negotiating deals for televising games and running the schedule of games, including producing the Super Bowl. And that is a printing press for money," he said.
Examples are:
•"Revenue for the league, not counting what the team has made, was $255.3 million
•The top eight league officials made a total of $50.1 million in 2011 from the NFL or related organizations, with commissioner Roger Goodell seeing about $29.5 million in his paycheck
•The league received another $10.4 million (including nearly $7.6 million to former commissioner Paul Tagliabue).
•In 2011, the NFL paid $35.9 million for office construction, $13.5 million in office rent, $6.7 in IT consulting and $6.7 million in travel expenses
•Total travel expenses topped $11 million
•It had notes and loans owed to it of nearly $620.8 million
•The organization spent more than $1.5 million on lobbying"
Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn is in favor of the NFL not being a nonprofit.
"The individual owners and teams pay taxes," he said. "We're not going after them, but what they do is they can put all this confluence of money into the league office and this as a nonprofit, which means they're not paying taxes like every other business that would be in a trade business like they are."
Sports attorney Andy Delaney gave a comment to CNN regarding his opinion on the NFL being a nonprofit.
"I don't think anything they are doing is illegal, but it is not in the spirit of a nonprofit, nonprofits don't have directors with salaries north of $40 million," he said. "It's a business, and they should call it that."
The NFL shouldn't be a nonprofit organization and they'd be able to succeed without the classification. This is evidenced by Major League Baseball still surviving after giving up nonprofit status in 2007 and the National Basketball Association thriving, despite never having one.
So, who's the next nonprofit up for billions?
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