Bag receivers: The NFL salary cap is going up

2/25/24 7:00PM

Bag receivers

‍The NFL is allowing teams to boost their already bumper wage bills next season, raising the salary cap by more than $30 million to take it north of $255 million, the league announced on Friday.

That 13.6% leap is the largest on record since the NFL first introduced the salary cap 30 years ago, when the most each team could pay out in wages was “just” $34.6 million. In the '24 season, franchises can also dish out a further $74 million on player benefits (think performance bonuses or retirement packages for former stars), taking the total top spend to $329 million per team, or a whopping $10.5 billion across the whole league.

‍More money ball

‍As you may expect for the most valuable sports division in the world, where TV deals alone could reportedly be worth over $126 billion by 2033, the NFL’s cap towers over other leagues, and the size of the increase underscores just how healthy the financials are for America’s most popular sport. Even the ascendant NBA is only projected to reach a $141 million salary cap — a figure that the NFL passed nearly a decade ago.

While salaries for every position on the gridiron have increased in recent decades, it’s interesting to note that there wasn’t a single football player in Forbes’ 10 highest-paid athletes of 2023. This is perhaps owing to the fact that the ranking also takes off-the-field earnings into account, an area where other sports have encouraged their players to command higher sponsorship and endorsement deals.

Note: stalling NFL collective bargaining agreement negotiations meant that the 2010 season was uncapped — though that didn’t lead to teams splashing the cash as much as you might imagine.

David Crowther, Claire Yubin Oh

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Shares of eBay fell as much as 10.5% in premarket trading on Thursday morning after the company gave a lower-than-expected profit forecast for the important holiday shopping season.

The e-commerce giant reported solid numbers for the third quarter on Wednesday, with revenue up 9% as reported to $2.8 billion and gross merchandise volume rising 10% to $20.1 billion, topping the average analyst forecast of $19.4 billion, per Bloomberg.

However, concerns about the future somewhat overshadowed these results.

eBay outlined its profit outlook for the period ending in December to $1.31 to $1.36 a share, with revenue at $2.83 billion to $2.89 billion. According to Bloomberg-compiled data, this broadly matches Wall Street’s estimates for the top line, but misses on the bottom line, with analysts forecasting EPS to come in at $1.39 — suggesting the company expects some further margin pressure.

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