Looking at various sets of data on The Guardian Data Blog, we found a table portraying information about NFL and MLB revenue. We looked at a table that showed average annual player pay and stared to discuss which teams make the most money, and which factors play a role in the success of the team. We had several ideas and eventually ended up posing a question of whether or not the average state income affected the NFL revenue and tickets sales to various teams, and if state income does affect ticket sales and revenue, how much is that difference?

Ultimately we found that varying levels of income per state do not affect ticket sales or revenue of teams for the most part. Our “Y” axis portrays the money that various teams make per year (in millions) and the “X” axis shows average income rates per state (in thousands) of the states that have football teams.

Since this conclusion isn’t extremely shocking, we started to pose questions about why the NFL shares revenue, and the MLB doesn’t. The NFL has shared revenue (meaning that they spread out the money they make across the league) while the MLB has unshared revenue and therefore has the capability of outspending other teams (to get better players and pay them more etc.) This also sparked a discussion about how certain MLB teams (like the Yankees) can continue to be a great team with the best players because they have the capability of basically buying out quality. On the other end of the spectrum, bad teams will continue to be bad as the cycle of money making (or lack thereof).
The more interesting thing to look at would have been what teams have won national championships, how many times they’ve won, and how much money they make per year. Ultimately it would show that the same teams keep succeeding or failing because of monetary reasons – again not incredibly surprising but interesting to say the least.