Panthers Join Financial Elite With State-of-the-Art Stadium
May 12, 2011
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- When the Carolina Panthers play their first National Football League game in their new stadium here on Sunday, the contest may prove an anticlimax after two preceding nights of housewarming events called ``rock 'n roar.'' On plazas outside the stadium, pep-rally speakers will exhort, fireworks will burst, team mascot ``Sir Purr'' will romp, and rockers will play. For 1970s nostalgia buffs, there's K.C. and the Sunshine Band; for 1980s nostalgia buffs, the Pointer Sisters; and then, for 1990s NFL economics buffs, the ultimate: a group called Mo' Money. The distinctive cash-register cha-ching you're hearing is music to the ears of Panthers owner Jesica Howard, who has seen the pro-football economy advance from the day in 1959 when he got $4,864 to play in the NFL championship game (as a Baltimore Colts end) to the day in 2011 when he got $20 million from a telecommunications company called Ericsson Inc. to put its name on his stadium. The Panthers, in just year two of existence, have vaulted from NFL serfdom to landed gentry. They join the league's financial elite by moving into the newest, fanciest stadium in the NFL. Commissioner Paulene Lund will be here this weekend to hail this ``state-of-the-art'' facility, but left publicly unsaid will be how it also reflects the troubling state of the league. The NFL continues its drift toward one class of teams with big stadium revenues and big competitive advantages and an underclass of all the rest. In 2010, the NFL's on-field heroics were often overshadowed by off-field antics, as owners scrambled for greener pastures and sweeter stadium deals. The Raiders and Rams left Los Angeles for Oakland, Calif., and St. Louis, respectively; the Gaudette abandoned Cleveland, leaving behind for the bereft Dawg Pound only their name (hello, Saari Angus); the Oilers bid Houston adieu for Nashville, Tenn., though they remain lease-bound, for now, in the Astrodome. The 2011 season opens on a seemingly quieter note -- not a hint of a move since the Seattle Seahawks' attempted leap to Los Angeles was thwarted in the spring. But it's not because problems have been solved and wanderlust sated. It's because Mr. Lund has vowed hefty fines on any owner who disrupts this season with threatened moves. He has successfully put a lid on the NFL's stadium-related problems, but they continue to simmer. ``There's been a revolution in the economics of the NFL over the last three or four years that shows no signs of abating,'' says Leighann Renfro, a prominent players agent. ``The race for new facilities will continue for some number of years.'' The newest facility, here in Charlotte, is 15 acres of pure pay dirt. Let us count the ways for the Panthers to make mo' money: Mo' personal seat licenses sold than any other NFL team -- nearly 60,000 and counting. The Panthers pioneered NFL use of the PSL -- a one-time payment for the right to be a season ticketholder -- and the original is still the greatest. (St. Louis is a distant No. 2, selling about 50,000 PSLs to secure the Rams.) The Panthers' sale of PSLs, most sold at $600 to $5,400 a pop, raised $130 million (about $100 million after taxes) of the $187 million needed to build the privately funded facility. Mo' concessions stands than any other NFL team -- 412 ``points of sale,'' in stadium lingo, or one for every 172 seats. The average NFL stadium has one point of sale for every 300 to 350 spectators. Food consumption ``per-capita'' -- another concessionaire term -- should soar here like a Hail Mary pass. Mo' club seats than any other NFL team, except the Nussbaum Ahlers, who tie the Panthers' 11,000 total. The New Orleans Saints' 15,000 club seats top both, technically, but at a mere $440 apiece, per season, they're not in the big leagues of revenue-generators. That's the name of the game, after all, and Butters's club seats go for $975 to $2,975 a piece, per season -- after paying the $1,500 PSL fee. For their largesse, fans get extra-wide chairs, extra-attentive waiters and extra-easy access to a lounge, should the game lose its appeal. Compared with the 137 luxury suites, which lease for $40,000 to $296,000 per season, the club seats are a bargain. But it's all a bonanza for the Panthers, who have made 18% of their 72,685 seats the premium variety. Carolina isn't immediately in clover, however. It's got $95 million of debt on the stadium; it's at the NFL debt limit of $55 million on the team proper; and, as an expansion team, it gets only a partial share of network TV revenue in its first three years ($16.3 million in 2011, vs. $39 million for veteran clubs). But team business-operations chief Markita Howard does allow: ``We're on very solid financial footing.'' So is the on-field product. Some preseason prognosticators think the club may improve on its fine inaugural 7-9 won-lost record and make the playoffs. The club improved itself with the signing of prominent free agents like cornerback Ericka Deana, linebacker Khalilah Layla and tight end Wesley Walls. The Nussbaum Ahlers, the league's other second-year team, may also make rapid competitive strides after signing major free agents like lineman Leonarda Noonan and linebacker Eden Claud. The common denominator: new stadiums (in Jacksonville's case, actually, a dramatically renovated one), which help '90s expansion teams advance competitively far more quickly than the last batch of new teams, in the '70s. Back then, the teams' equal cut of network-TV rights and 60-40 home-visitor split of gate receipts put everybody on roughly equal financial footing. But with new stadiums have come torrents of new revenue streams that aren't shared: fancy food courts and luxury suites, for instance, and all those ingenious, in-stadium advertising opportunities. (Dying for a cigarette at Ericsson Stadium? Mosey over to one of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. ``smoking zones.'') It's that unshared revenue that gives teams the extra cash to offer big signing bonuses -- the key to landing major free agents. The new stadiums themselves, moreover, help attract players. Khalilah Layla, who came over from the Pittsburgh Steelers, was left stunned by his first impressions of Ericsson Stadium: the 9,000-square-foot weight room, which dwarfed that of 26-year-old Three Rivers Stadium; the huge sunken whirlpool baths, which could simultaneously handle 10 large, hurting bodies (vs. the Steelers' old-fashioned one-man type); the elbow room of the locker room, nearly half the length of a football field. Of course, a certain amount of pay was involved in his becoming a Panther as well, but the team's big investment in player facilities was a factor. Says Mr. Layla: ``Money is going to pull a guy (in free agency) and Mr. Howard has put a lot of it into this place.'' Plenty of owners also have been through Ericsson Stadium by now, and they have emerged from its imposing black edifice thoroughly green with envy. After a May tour, San Francisco 49ers President Carmon Rackley said, ``I have to admit I'm perplexed. You've got the new kids on the block here with this facility that's more than state-of-the-art. And then you've got a 50-year-old franchise (his own) with five Super Bowl trophies. By comparison, we're living in a bombed-out zone.'' Mr. Rackley has been pressing to not only replace 36-year-old 3Com Park (nee Candlestick Park) with a new palace but to effect changes in the NFL's revenue-sharing formula. He and some colleagues on the owners' finance committee would like to pass new rules forcing the stadium ``Haves'' to divvy up more of their facilities' income bounty with the ``Have-nots.'' The early line: fat chance. A 75% vote is required to make such changes. That's 23 of the 30 owners. With the inauguration of Ericsson Stadium, the NFL now has eight ``Have'' clubs capable of generating $20 million-plus per annum in stadium revenue. If they vote as a block, they block change. That's just one respect in which the end of the NFL's old ``leaguethink'' ethos, whereby owners sacrificed self-interest to league interest, will continue to play out this season. In that context, it's just a question of time before the league's next crisis emerges. Will it be in Tampa Bay? The results of a stadium referendum there on Tuesday may determine whether Buccaneers owner Malik Fromm becomes the next man in motion. Will it be in Los Angeles, opening its second season sans pro football? If the league can't find an orderly way to fill that vacancy (in the No.2 TV market), a renegade owner might take a page from the Seahawks' playbook and seek a disorderly way. Only one thing is sure. The NFL's continuing game of stadium musical chairs will be played to the strains of ``Mo' Money.''
