Despite Brett Favre’s impact on ticket sales and other revenues, the celebrity quarterback is expected to cost the Vikings more money than he generates. In discussions with three sports and entertainment sources who spoke anonymously, there was consensus the Vikings will lose money this season on Favre’s reported $12 million contract.
Since the announcement of Favre’s signing last week the Vikings have sold thousands of season and individual game tickets. Let’s presume the franchise sells an additional 10,000 tickets per game (probably a generous estimate) at an average cost of $70 per ticket. For a 10 game preseason and regular season schedule, that’s $7 million in gross sales. But the Vikings don’t keep all of that money because the NFL requires the home team to share 40 percent of its ticket revenues with the visiting teams.
Playoff ticket revenues? Nope, the NFL keeps all the ticket revenues from those games.
The Favre fan hysteria, including the rush for Vikings jerseys with his name on the back, will be big business. However, NFL merchandising revenues are like TV revenues in that they’re divided up among the 32 franchises.
The Vikings will likely profit from an increase in local sponsorships. If they were able to sell several additional sponsorships, sources thought those revenues might increase by $3 million at the absolute max.
The Vikings may reduce their payroll by $500,000 or more by cutting a player because of Favre’s roster spot. That would mean another way to look at what Favre costs is $11 million, not $12 million, and the Vikings could have revenues of about $7 million to put against that figure. Net loss: $4 million. That’s minimum and probably under stated by a lot.
Vikings owners, including Zygi Wilf, didn’t sign Favre with worries about whether dime for dime he pays for himself in 2009. Instead, this is another sizeable investment in player payroll to push the Vikings toward post-season success, perhaps a Super Bowl.
The Vikings are now mentioned in the same sentence with the most likely contenders for an NFC championship. A championship will increase public enthusiasm and support for the Vikings beyond previous levels. Instead of often being angry with the Vikings, this becomes a Purple-mad state.
And that’s exactly the kind of culture that will help persuade the public and government officials to push the drive for a new stadium into the “end zone.” That’s what Wilf wants, and as part of that process the value of his franchise will jump from its estimated $839 million (lowest in the NFL according to Forbes.com) to over a billion dollars. https://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/30/sportsmoney_nfl08_NFL-Team-Valuations_Rank_2.html
So Favre is definitely a potential money maker for the Vikings. Just don’t crunch the numbers too closely right away.