In case you somehow didn't notice if you aren't one of the tens of millions of

people watching on TV or placing some bets or keeping up with the Taylor Swift

news the National Football League has begun its new season.

The NFL is the richest sports league in history and probably the most growth obsessed as well.

One reason is that many team owners made their money by building their own businesses

in real estate or oil, in the HVAC industry, in America's biggest chain of truck stops.

That kind of business success requires a strong urge to expand.

And so, not surprisingly, the NFL is also driven by expansion.

There are more games per season than there used to be played in more places

this year in England, Germany and Brazil.

NFL games are distributed on just about every network and streaming platform you've ever heard

of and some you haven't.

If you look at the top 100 TV broadcasts last year in the U.S, you will see that 93 of them were NFL games.

Among the others were the Oscars, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and three college football games.

The NFL did around $13 billion in revenues last year and each of the 32 teams are worth on

average more than $5 billion, that is much more than teams in any other sport.

Owning an NFL team has provided a route for wealthy individuals or families to become

very wealthy. This creates its own problem. There can be a lot of taxes

to pay when it's time to sell and there just aren't that many potential buyers

for a five billion dollar asset at least the right kind of buyers. The

NFL was founded and run for decades by a relatively small group of families and it has

remained vigilant about who should be let in. In Europe, the top soccer leagues allow

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