Quote:Customer demand is pushing the prices.    As long as young American males have an insatiable demand for NFL football, widget makers will want to advertise during the games to market to that demo.  As long as advertisers are writing checks for commercial time, the mega billion media conglomerates who own the major networks will pay the NFL huge mountains of money for the broadcasting rights to the games.   The NFL owners would be stupid to not let their product supply meet the customer demand.  It's business 101.   As long as the owners are drawing revenue ,the players will get a certain percentage of that revenue per the CBA.   

 

Preseason games dominate primetime television ratings.   Cuban has a right to be jealous of the NFL.   The NFL Draft drew 3 times the audience of the NBA playoffs.  

 

Let's not forget the heart of the foundation of economic theory is that there is rational behavior.

 

One can easily argue that in both cases, this was/is simply not happening.

 

It would be wise to consider this, in light of all those same tenets you tout being turned on their heads during the bubble.  In fact, folks were making those same "all is well" statements when common sense suggested something was not quite right with this picture.  Why?  There was not rational behavior in the market.

 

Unfortunately, such irrational behavior can have a negative affect on the entire league if they all join in and follow.

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