re: Panther's Financials Leaked, $112mil In Profits 2010-2012

Y'all actually look at these or no? They had a negative gross operating margin this year and only a gross margin of $30 million last year (which is indeed due to player contracts) and pretty much zero revenue growth (which I guess will be solved by the tv agreement stated). To call the income from the NFL "massive" at $45MM and $47MM would be an understatement and is legitimately propping up the earnings of this franchise (see: Income from Investments in NFL Ventures, L.P. line item). As an aside if you were ever curious as to how big the "NFL" itself is financially, scroll into the notes and look at the "Investments in NFL Ventures LP" note.

Get off the I/S and look at the CF/S, there's no add-back for that I/S line item out of net income so that's a pure cash flow since its an equity method investment (also buried in "Other Assets" on the B/S which is where the CF line item change comes from for the accountant/finance types out there). Crudely back out of operating cash flows (39MM and 26MM) the 45MM and 47MM NFL pmts in 11 and 12, respectively, and you have negative cash flows both years. I caveat that with the fact that there's a lot of operating asset/liability movement that is relatively unexplanatory (why did they increase prepaid expenses ~$20mm, I have no idea) that is affecting that number as well. I'm not going to try and estimate what actual unlevered fcf might be because I don't know what components of that are maintenance capex/expansion capex etc and what the nature of those operating assets/liabs are.

Also, yeah their cash balance went up ~30MM from 11 to 12. They also reclassified ~$27 MM from "Cash reserves held by the NFL" from a fixed asset to cash (I have no idea why and the notes do not mention it), so pretty much a wash (not that anyone aside from DS would ever consider that a sign of profitability given the number of things that can impact a cash balance, but I digress).

I'm not saying they're losing money hand over fist, or that the team itself is in terrible fiscal shape (they paid off a shite ton of debt last year though, and I wouldn't call 3x levering "healthy" either, its closer to unhealthy than healthy for a capital intensive business), or that the owners aren't doing a lot of jawboning, but they're also not killing it either.

Every time these come out I say this. The value of owning an NFL team (or most sports franchises for that matter) is hoping that the next fool will come along and pay you more than what you paid for the team, its been that way for 20 years. On a standalone business perspective owning an NFL team continues to be a mediocre investment at best and one that requires a substantial economic cushion in order to operate (see: Shinn, George).