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Comment by halter73 | Hacker News Reader

While I agree that the NFL is certainly not a charity, I'm not sure that the NFL's nonprofit status is necessarily indicative of the league exploiting loopholes. I have always been led to believe that all league profits are shared among the league's for-profit teams who pay the appropriate taxes.

Can you explain how the NFL is a prime example of a nonprofit exploiting loopholes?

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The 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act was the first piece of gift-wrapped legislation, granting the leagues legal permission to conduct television-broadcast negotiations in a way that otherwise would have been price collusion. Then, in 1966, Congress enacted Public Law 89‑800, which broadened the limited antitrust exemptions of the 1961 law.

But in general, the teams make tons of money and have close zero profits. They use variations of "hollywood" accounting. Which might help explain the cognitive dissonance of profitless monopolies =D.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_Broadcasting_Act_of_196...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

I would consider the Sports Broadcasting Act and the following legislation that expressly permitted the AFL/NFL merger to be, as you imply, well-known gifts from Congress to American professional sports leagues and the NFL in particular.

Those are hardly loopholes, however, since the legislation worked exactly as Congress intended as far as I can tell.

Your allegations of "Hollywood" accounting seem more consistent with loophole exploitation, but I would like more concrete evidence other than the alleged dearth of team profits.

Anyone with firsthand access to NFL, MLB, Premier League Soccer(and other pro sports) financial info will attest to the lack of book earnings. see for eg

http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/blog/the-money-leagues-part-2...

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