How to bid for the NFL's biggest prize: Team ownership of Carolina Panthers

After the last down is played and a new Super Bowl champion hoists the Lombardi Trophy on Sunday, the focus of the National Football League will turn to another prize: the sale of one of its 32 teams. The winning bidder will pay a huge sum for a property that is as close to a guarantee of fame and fortune as there can be.

Jerry Richardson, a former professional football player who made his fortune in the food service business, is putting the Carolina Panthers up for sale after the season ends. He has owned the team since 1993, when the NFL added it to the league. But last year, allegations of sexual and racial harassment against him surfaced, and amid a team investigation, Richardson announced that he would sell the team.

The next owner of the Panthers will have to be incredibly wealthy. NFL ownership rules say that only individuals can buy a team — so no corporate partnerships or funds — and that the general partner has to put up at least 30 per cent of the purchase price, which runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The buyer is also limited in the amount that can be borrowed.

“The meek may inherit the earth, but you have to be a billionaire to own an NFL team,” said Marc Ganis, president of Sportscorp, who has been a financial adviser to two-thirds of the NFL teams.

The last team to be sold was the Buffalo Bills in 2014 for $1.4 billion, which set a record. The Panthers are expected to fetch far more. “The NFL is the most profitable league,” said Sal Galatioto, president of Galatioto Sports Partners, who represented Dan Snyder in his purchase of the Washington Redskins in 1999 for $800 million.

He added that the league divvied up the money from national television and merchandise deals evenly among the teams. “Whether you’re in Buffalo or New York, you get the same share of revenue,” he said. “The only difference is the venue revenues.”

Each team, no matter its record, received about $244 million in 2016 from television revenue alone. Add in tens of millions of dollars from merchandise revenue, and a team has enough money for its entire payroll before a ticket is sold. For billionaires, the lure can be enticing. But what does it take to become the next member of the exclusive NFL team owners club? Here are four things buyers should consider.

When Arthur Blank, a co-founder of Home Depot, bought the Atlanta Falcons in 2002 from the team’s original owners, he committed to making the Falcons better for the city. The same could be said for Robert McNair, who worked for four years to persuade the NFL to return to Houston in 2002.

“You want to determine what the primary motivation of the buyer is,” said Joseph A Bailey III, who was the chief executive of the Miami Dolphins a decade ago, during Wayne Huizenga’s ownership of the team. He said many incentives drove bidders, including asset appreciation, a sense of civic duty, access to other owners, a legacy for heirs or simply a love of the sport.

Bailey, who runs the sports leadership practice at RSR Partners, said that if he were consulting a buyer on the purchase of the Panthers, he would determine that motivation and structure the bid accordingly.

© 2018 The New York Times News Service