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Matt the Engineer 1
I'm sure they paid Congress to get the right to be a not-for-profit corporation, just like everyone else.
Posted by Matt the Engineer on April 3, 2012 at 4:02 PM
Fnarf 2
All professional sports are "glorified tax shelters". Baseball most of all; they have that glorious anti-trust exemption from Congress, and can shockingly depreciate player salaries, but every team is deliberately run at a loss in order to absorb tax liability and push someone's taxes into the capital gains bracket. If you own a media outlet too -- like Ted Turner famously did when he owned TBS and the Braves, or like the Yankees with YES -- you can really shed tax liability by moving profits between the two (or twenty) companies depending on the situation.

As Paul Beeston, former president of the Toronto Blue Jays, once said "under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), I can turn a $4 million profit into a $2 million loss, and I can get every national accounting firm to agree with me".
Posted by Fnarf http://www.facebook.com/fnarf on April 3, 2012 at 4:10 PM
Keister Button 3
Interesting coincidence: the day this is posted is the day that I learned the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, a Canadian Football League team, is a "community-owned" team, one of three remaining in the CFL. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers have been in the Grey Cup playoff more often (24 times) than any other CFL team.
Posted by Keister Button on April 3, 2012 at 4:39 PM
4
The Green Bay packers are also "publicly owned."
Posted by fARTing on April 3, 2012 at 7:25 PM
5
>2. I think baseball no lnger has anti-trust exemption.
Posted by fARTing on April 3, 2012 at 7:31 PM
Fnarf 6
@5, you are mistaken. It's been reaffirmed a few times. The Supreme Court has made it explicit that if Congress wants to change the law they can, and there's talk every so often about doing so, but nothing ever happens.
Posted by Fnarf http://www.facebook.com/fnarf on April 3, 2012 at 7:46 PM
Karlheinz Arschbomber 7
Not to mention the long-running pandemic of massive subsidies, outright gifting of needless stadiums. Because the illiterate tobacco-chewing dimwits need to be paid millions, too, can't spend money on facilities, milk & bilk the public.

http://www.fieldofschemes.com/

Posted by Karlheinz Arschbomber http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arschbombe on April 4, 2012 at 2:30 AM
Kinison 8
I dont think they should be a non-profit, but the NFL should loosen its grip on letting teams be public owned, like the Greenbay Packers.
Posted by Kinison http://www.holgatehawks.com on April 4, 2012 at 7:58 AM

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