When Jerry Jones purchased the Dallas Cowboys in 1989, his investment bankers told him he was making a big mistake. Figure that Cowboys legend Roger Staubach failed with his own effort to put together an investor syndicate to buy the team. Luxury boxes at Texas Stadium were empty in many instances, so were seats. Jones was taking a big risk simply because the NFL of 1989 was a far cry from the NFL of 2022.
The Jones anecdote is necessary as a way of reminding readers that nothing is forever in the marketplace. What’s popular can and often does lose its luster (remember the Blackberry, or before that the Nokia mobile?), while what’s down can often rise. At present the NFL’s dominance is unquestioned, but the latter was once true about baseball. And the NBA was once seen as less watchable than the largely unwatchable television produced by the Big Three networks in the 1970s and 80s.
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