Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace asked former NFL quarterback and current Fox Sports analyst Jim Brown if the league would be forced to sell out games or play games without paying for them.
“It’s the same situation the NFL was in for a decade,” Brown said.
“I mean, you know, I think it’s inevitable that it’s going to happen.”
Brown said that the NFL will eventually get tired of the free agency frenzy, but he doesn’t believe that will happen for the next two years.
“You’re just going to see them just throw up their hands and say, ‘Well, it’s not worth it,'” Brown said of players and owners who would prefer to play games at a lower price than pay for them at a higher price.
“The owners have the option to decide that this is worth it.
They’re not going to make that choice for a few years.
It will happen eventually.”
Brown said the NFL is still trying to figure out how to keep players and teams financially healthy while they play games in order to maintain a competitive environment.
“That’s the challenge,” he said.
Brown said that as the NFL continues to grow and the league starts to look more like the other sports, he expects that teams will be forced into selling out games.
“If you go back in time a couple years, when the NBA was trying to do things, the NFL and NFL teams were the only sports in America that were going to go out and sell out every game, no matter what the price,” Brown explained.
“So I think that’s a big part of the equation here, that the owners are going to have to decide what’s going on with their players, and that’s the way they’re going to manage it.”