Opinion: NFL Succeeds in Keeping Nonprofit Status Quiet

A survey last month found that a large majority of Americans are unaware that the National Football League is a nonprofit organization, a Bloomberg sports columnist writes.

Asked whether the NFL, a 501(c)(6) “business league,” is a nonprofit entity, 69 percent of roughly 1,000 adult Americans polled by Fairleigh Dickinson University answered no, compared to 13 percent who correctly said yes. Bloomberg’s Kavitha A. Davidson says the numbers show “how effective the NFL’s public-relations machine has been at keeping its nonprofit status out of the public eye.”

Ms. Davidson cites sections of the tax code stating that none of a 501(c)(6) group’s net earnings “may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual and it may not be organized for profit to engage in an activity ordinarily carried on for profit.” The NFL, with $9.5-billion in annual revenue, “doesn’t seem to fit this definition,” she writes.

More than two-thirds of those polled opposed using public funds or tax breaks to build stadiums or to keep teams from relocating.