This season, the Detroit Lions’ offensive line has been in excellent condition. Earlier this season, quarterback Jared Goff bought pricey luxury bags and watches for his colleagues around the holidays. Following a good season, the 29-year-old experienced signal-caller presented eight of his teammates with pricey Breitling watches.
Detroit just gave up 31 sacks throughout the regular season and had one of their best seasons in decades.
According to the team’s website, “(Penei) Sewell was named All-Pro for the first time in his career and is the best right tackle in the NFL in only his third season.” Ragnow was also an All-Pro, and both Decker and Jackson were Pro Bowl alternates. Glasgow enjoyed one of his best seasons as a professional in 2023. Ben Johnson took over as offensive coordinator in 2022, and the offensive line prospered. When healthy, the unit is among the best in the NFL. Much of the credit must also go to offensive line coach Hank Fraley, who is widely regarded as one of the conference’s best position coaches.
In 2023, the Lions were placed in the top five in both rushing and throwing.
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A respected expert discusses Saudis, the PGA Tour, and what billions really mean.
Let’s discuss the Detroit Lions.
Dave Berri enjoys doing this. He works in sports economics. He is a professor at Southern Utah University who specializes in this topic. He has authored several books and articles about it. He has a Wikipedia page. On and on. He is an expert. Maybe an expert. He’s also a Lions fan from the Motor City, which means you bleed silver and blue and still have Barry Sanders stuck in your mind.
This season, fans felt bigger than Calvin Johnson, who used the nickname Megatron on his path to the Hall of Fame. Detroit won the NFC North. It was one win away from the Super Bowl. It was heavenly, if only because almost every other Lions season seemed like hell. The faithful had more NFL draft websites queued up than they’d like to admit, having survived more 4-12 years than they could recall.
Berri, on the other hand, is sensible, and he would rather be happy than have his soul destroyed. He left the Lions years ago and has only recently returned to the team, now that Detroit is doing well.
LOL.
Yes, sure.
“I tell my students,” Berri told me the other day, “that being a Lions fan is like going to a restaurant every week and getting a terrible meal and then just coming back and saying, ‘I know it was bad last week, but I think they got a new chef, I think it’s really going to work, this is going to be totally different now.'” And then you get your dinner, and it’s still terrible.
But I’ve got to keep coming back. “I’ll be here the day the meal is good.”
I told Berri, “I hate to say it.”
But yes, that is ridiculous, man.
“But that’s what sports fans are,” he went on to say. “That’s precisely what sports fans are.
“Those who watch golf are the same way. If you enjoy watching major golf tournaments, you are unlikely to quit doing so. This is what you enjoy doing. Fans are like that. They say something. They typically say things like, “If you do this, I’ll leave.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
You mostly haven’t. Men’s professional golf is life. You still wear red on Sundays. You still eat pimento cheese in April. But what happens now? You’ve said that several times in recent years. LIV Golf was founded in 2022 with billions of dollars from the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF), and players from the established brand, the PGA Tour, fled.
A year later, the Tour and the PIF agreed on a finance arrangement. But seven months later, they’re still negotiating, and the Tour recently signed another arrangement with something called the Strategic Sports Group (SSG). The Tour’s players are suddenly rich with cash, while the Tour-LIV fight continues. And, no, this paragraph did not reference a single stroke played.
I called Berri.
We talked for several hours.
The impetus was the Tour’s agreement with the SSG, which was revealed last Wednesday, although that plainly does not stand alone. Fortunately, we have a guide. To guide our discussion, we’ll rely on the PGA Tour’s statement on the SSG arrangement, which began this way:
That is the news.
This includes:
— A group of extremely wealthy sports owners;
— A country has an investment fund valued at $700 billion;
– A legacy sports league.
– Players suddenly become owners.
There are layers, including another really significant one.
You’re the fan.
Here’s my talk with Berri, minimally edited for clarity and organized into six themes.
I. Strategic Sports Group
As part of PGA Tour Enterprises, SSG, a consortium of American sports club owners led by Fenway Sports Group, completed a $3 billion financial and strategic commitment today. SSG is investing an initial $1.5 billion in PGA Tour Enterprises, with a strategic focus on increasing revenue production for the benefit of the players and identifying possibilities to improve the game of golf around the world. – PGA Tour statement.
But why?
Why would John Henry (primary owner of the Fenway Sports Group), Steven Cohen (owner of the New York Mets), and Arthur Blank (owner of the Atlanta Falcons) suddenly invest more than a billion dollars in professional golf?
Our talk started around there.
DB: “Why are you investing billions of dollars? What is your motivation here? Men’s sports franchise selling costs, investment in new leagues, and this deal all demonstrate that financial metrics may not justify the expenditure. As a result, the ratings appear to be rather flat.
They aren’t; golf isn’t suddenly exploding. It’s not like they’ll suddenly find twice as many fans.”
NP: “As we delve in, this is exactly why I am calling. We’ll get to that. Please keep going.
DB: “If you were to say, hey, in the numbers, this is a growing industry, and global viewership of golf is going to suddenly double, and someone said, I want to get in on that business, you might have a justification to invest billions of dollars in it, right?” Because that is an asset and will be worth something in the future. But looking at the numbers, you realize that’s not what’s going on here. Golf isn’t suddenly becoming really popular. It has never been more popular.
“So, what motivates you? The truth is that you have to figure out why people invest in sports, and it’s often not for financial reasons—it’s because sports provide something to the owner. And this is something I tell students: go through the top 500 richest people in the country and see how many of them you know and can name. You may be familiar with some of the ultras, or those at the very top. Bill Gates is right. But as you go down the list, you’ll notice a lot of individuals who are very wealthy—and you’ll be like, “I’ve never heard of that person.”
“Now, as you go down the list, you’ll notice that whenever that individual owns a sports team, I recognize them. Sports transform their image. It allows individuals to say, “Hey, I’m a part of this,” and then others recognize them. That is why they have invested in it.
“And just looking at this agreement and this quick investment, it appears that the Saudi investors came along and said, ‘We want to do professional golf, and we want what it will bring us. We’ll be connected to it, and it will alter our appearance.
And then a group of American millionaires said, ‘But we don’t want you doing that; that’s our toy, and we don’t want you taking it away. So now we’re going to invest in that.” As a result, you’re left with the same situation as when an NFL team sells. Forbes will come along and say, “This team is worth $1 billion,” and then the sale price will be announced, which will be $3 billion. Why would it sell for $3 billion if it’s only worth $1 billion?
Well, since there are only a few of those assets out there, and there are a lot of people who want it and are all bidding for it, which drives up the price, and voila, the person who pays for it pays a lot more than you would predict based on the financial statistics.”
[Before we proceed, here is some backstory. LIV Golf was introduced in 2022 with the PIF’s backing. Had the Saudis approached the PGA Tour before LIV? In one of the greatest articles on the subject, the New Yorker’s Zach Helfand was told in 2022 by a then-LIV Golf official that the Saudis once intended to make a billion-dollar Tour investment but were turned down; the Tour, however, denied being approached.
NP: I’d like to say, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the takeaway that I had there is that is it really as simple as, in the question of why they invested, is it really that they’re trying to save an American sport?”
DB: “Clearly, we don’t know that. I am not going to say that. But if you consider all of the other possible explanations, and the most obvious one is that this is a massive growth industry in which I intend to invest billions of dollars in order to make extremely large sums of money, my question is, why didn’t you do that ten years ago? The story would have been the same ten years ago.
Why do you suddenly think golf is worth all of this money? I believe the issue that everyone should ask is whether, if the Saudis are no longer involved and doing nothing, you can still obtain billions of dollars from people to invest in PGA golf when they weren’t doing so previously. I don’t think that’s reasonable. It appears like the Saudis came along and said, ‘Look, we want to take this over,’ and a group of Americans replied, ‘We don’t want you doing that.’ “And you say, ‘OK.'”
NP: It’s a good question. “What would the sports owners expect on an investment?”
DB: “I hope you don’t lose everything you put in. Again, I don’t believe they’re doing this with the expectation of receiving a return. I believe the hope is that you do not want to lose the money. You aren’t simply throwing money away.”
2. PGA TOUR
“Today is a watershed moment for the PGA Tour and golf fans around the world,” said Jay Monahan, PGA Tour commissioner and CEO of PGA Tour Enterprises. “By making PGA Tour members owners of their league, we strengthen the collective investment of our players in the success of the PGA Tour.” – PGA Tour statement.
What happens now?
There is fresh money on the PGA Tour. Where is it going? Why didn’t it try to grab it earlier?
Our talk proceeded.
NP: That’s a good question. “With the money that the Tour got, what would be your guess at how they would spend it, outside of the player equity?”
DB: “That is a damn good question.”
Who the hell knows? What additional assets do you have besides the players? What do you have? What are you planning to do? Put in scoreboards? I mean, I’m not sure what the investment is for. They do not have stadiums. I’m not sure what the investment is. That is a very smart question to ask them. What are you intending to use this money for? It doesn’t make very much sense. That’s the thing: what’s the call for investment in? And it appears like the appeal for investment is, “I need to give the players money so they don’t switch to this other league,” and that’s all. And, if that’s the reason, what is the return on investment? “There is no return on that.”
NP: “Could it be to improve the viewing experience?” There have been suggestions that they may invest somewhere where they are less reliant on ads for broadcasts. Or broadcasts could be longer. Something like that, where people are more engaged.”
DB: “Yes. How much of an investment could that possible be? Also, if it was such a large investment with such a high return, you would have done it already. I mean, you can. They are capable of doing such things. I just don’t think it’s worth billions to accomplish it.”
NP: “With this investment, the Tour stated that they had reached a valuation of $12 billion. “Does that sound correct?”
DB says, “It may be. Yes, maybe. To put it in perspective, the NBA’s annual income is $10 billion, therefore the entire league is worth several times more than that. So the NBA, off the top of my head, would cost $100 billion. So the PGA is roughly a tenth of the NBA. Given the fan base, that seems about right. Sure, that is probably not ridiculous.”
