Ben Gilbert

Then you can afford to have a whole bunch of costs to make that experience happen.

Yep.

Value creation, value capture.

And the way that I want to do value creation, value capture here is of the value created by the NFL in the world, how much of it do they capture?

There's a thing we didn't talk about, which is taxpayer-funded stadiums.

All the research you read about new stadiums that are funded by taxpayers, and not every stadium is funded by taxpayers.

Like, the new Giants-Jets one in New York is funded by the team in the NFL, whereas, like, the Bills one is going to be funded by the state of New York, largely.

And...

Every piece of research you read there is like, yeah, they're a best break-even for communities, unless it's part of some larger economic redevelopment thing.

So I think the NFL has... They're now unbelievably extractive of the networks.

They've historically been very extractive of players, but now the players seem to have a pretty good or at least better deal than they ever had before.

And NFL teams are very extractive of communities in the stadium deals.

And I think if you look at the $18 billion a year of revenue, the NFL, if you include the players, captures as much value as it possibly can.

They are unbelievably good at value capture.

Yes.

Value capture pioneers, I believe, is a phrase that we used on another episode.

But it is amazing how much Mindshare the NFL does own, in my opinion, on top of the actual revenue number.

They don't leave a lot of consumer surplus in dollars, but given our earlier conversation that $18 billion isn't that much revenue compared to other companies we've covered on this show, maybe there is some kind of unquantifiable consumer mindshare that does exist on top of any of the revenue they generate.

How can you put a price on the fun of a Super Bowl party or texting about an amazing catch with your dad or, you know, there's all sorts of things that are hard to value.

Right.