There's only 32 NFL teams and even when the crappy ones play internationally, they draw huge crowds. And that's because it's a closed circuit so the level of play of the worst teams is much higher than the worst teams in European football. The NFL as a league is also designed to have a much higher degree of parity than European football. There are also fewer games, which increases the importance of each game. These rules are dictated by the NFL (more or less) because the goal of the league is to make the league successful by being fun to watch.

The NFL might distribute money evenly, but only among the select, limited number of teams that the NFL allows to be a part of the NFL brand.

Of course 32 teams will be better than the literally 10 thousands of teams in European, which all have a chance of playing at the highest level, albeit not a huge chance for most of them. My local football team is part of same pyramid as CL, despite them only playing for fun. Small local teams have risen through the ranks to the best national leagues.

The "draft" plays a role in this too where the worst teams, in theory, get the best players further increasing the chance of parity. Unless those terrible teams are terrible because their management sucks and just repeatedly make terrible decisions over the years.

I think some of them would like to see Tom Brady play for Tampa Bay, especially after winning the Super Bowl. About five years ago his old team the patriots played in Mexico City’s arena to 75,000 people and it was a huge hit. This is in a country which has its own strong soccer culture.

Speaking as someone from Malaysia, I would love to there be an easy way to watch NFL games here.

Pirating them is quite easy, though that doesn't fix the timezone problem

The CBA gives owners 52% of football related money and players 48%. So, no, the majority of the money does not go to players.

And the way football related is defined is fairly narrow, so some obvious revenue sources (suite upgrades, parking, etc) do not fall under football related and therefore goes to the owners.

Further, the vast majority of wealth the owners make is through the rapidly increasing value of their teams.

At the end of the day the income is peanuts compared to the wealth and asset value appreciation that is generated by the teams.

> The CBA gives owners 52% of football related money and players 48%. So, no, the majority of the money does not go to players.

I think you're looking at this a bit too narrowly - every expense involved in running an NFL team comes out of that 52% that the owners "get", so none of the owners are actually seeing all 52% of that money.

Please note - I'm simply responding to the specifics here - I'm not saying that owners are hard done by, in fact I believe the split should be more weighted to the players (and include roster expansion and more pay/stability for practice squad players).

How much of that value appreciation is derived from income, vs the status symbol nature of owning a team?