If/when the NFL has to come up with $14.088 billion (plus interest and fees) in the Sunday Ticket litigation, each team will have to come up with more than $440 million.
For many of the ultra-rich, there aren’t that many coins in the piggy bank.
There’s a difference between paper value and liquid cash. And if 345 Park Avenue has to put out the bat signal for $440 million per team, some owners will have a hard time coming up with that amount.
We won’t name names, because we don’t have access to the information that would allow reliable estimations of the cash that each owner has on hand.
For one team, we know. The Packers, as a publicly-held corporation, must produce an annual report. Last year, the team had $583 million in “cash and investments.”
It might be hard to otherwise do business if more than 75 percent of the cash and investments on hand have to be handed over to the league.
Other owners might not be nearly as liquid as the Packers. That could make it even more important for owners lacking half a billion in gold bullion to accept private-equity investments. Which, if enough teams are looking for private equity, could depress the value.
It’s supply and demand, with a dash of desperation. If, say, a third of the owners (again, we don’t know the actual number) will need help getting to $440 million, they’ll be competing with each other for private equity deals — and in turn driving the prices down.
The simplest path to $450 million could be to borrow it. That would require the league at large to agree to allow that much debt to be assumed per team. If nine or more owners have the money and want to stick it to the ones who don’t, any effort to increase the borrowing limit could be scrapped.
None of it matters if the league ultimately wins the case. Going all in on the possibility of victory being snatched from the jaws of defeat isn’t a strategy. It’s a recipe for bankruptcy, as it relates to the owners whose liabilities might suddenly dwarf their assets, once $440 million is added to the wrong side of the ledger.