By Paul M. Banks
The Chicago Bears 2009 marketing slogan, “One City. One Team” will have added significance on Sunday when a team (Arizona Cardinals) that once called the second city home returns to play Chicago’s first, and currently only, NFL franchise. And it’s true that nothing unites this city like the Bears. In summer, allegiances are split between the Cubs and Sox. In winter, neither hockey nor basketball are popular enough to draw in a huge army of fans the way football does.
These days, finance and economics are on everybody’s mind. Well, I have a business proposition to eventually create wealth and jobs (at least locally): a second NFL team. As I’ll show you, consumer demand is perfect for a second team.
Expansion Theory
Baseball may be “America’s Pasttime,” but that nickname comes from the 19th century, and today the National Football League is its passion; doing bigger television ratings numbers and earning larger revenue streams than any other sport. In a Harris sports poll done in 2008, the NFL was the favorite sport of as many people (30 percent) as the combined total of the next three professional sports: baseball (fifteen percent),...
