Billionaire NFL Owners Fined Thousands by Judge in Rams Case
A Missouri judge fined four NFL team owners for failing to comply with his July order to turn over financial information as part of a lawsuit St. Louis filed over the move by the Rams football team to Los Angeles.
A visibly angry St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Christopher McGraugh on Wednesday fined New York Giants owner John Mara $8,000, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones $6,000, and ordered Clark Hunt of the Kansas City Chiefs and Robert Kraft of the New England Patriots to pay $5,000 each. All four also were ordered to pay a total of $25,000 in fees to the plaintiff’s attorneys, according to the court order.
“I don’t think your clients are acting with good intentions,” McGraugh told National Football League attorney Benjamin Razi during the hearing.
St. Louis, along with the county and the city’s convention authority, want the records to calculate punitive damages should their breach-of-contract suit over the Rams 2016 relocation to Los Angeles prove successful. Hunt, Jones, Kraft, Mara and former Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson were part of the NFL committee that handled relocation efforts at the time of the Rams move.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-13/billionaire-nfl-owners-fined-thousands-by-judge-in-rams-dispute
= new reply since forum marked as read
... aren't owned by the people in the cities that they SUPPOSEDLY represent.
I think Green Bay is the only team with publicly-owned shares in their team.
Yep, it's still that way...
https://huddleup.substack.com/p/green-bay-packers-local-revenue-declines
The Green Bay Packers pride themselves on being the only publicly-owned, not-for-profit, major league professional team in the United States.
Rather than having a single wealthy owner, or multiple partners, the Packers are owned by fans — 360,760 shareholders owning a total of 5,011,558 shares, to be exact. The “articles of incorporation” also prohibit any person from owning more than 200,000 shares, ensuring that no individual can take control of the team.
Meanwhile, the Cincinnati Bengals are owned by a guy more concerned about gaining a larger ownership share in the team than winning games. (After Paul Brown was so paranoid that his family would lose control of the team, like what happened to him with the Cleveland Browns.) And it's local taxpayers who buy the stadiums! What a great deal for Mike Brown, but a crock of crap for the locals!
Oh, well... it was hard for me to keep following the Bengals and the NFL after their group-rape case in Seattle back in 1992. And like karma for that horrible incident, they've never won a playoff game since about the time that happened.
