Why doesn't every state in the U.S. have a professional football team in the NFL?

Answer 1

Money, Money, Money. The NFL wont move a team into every state because they wont profit from a state like Maine or West Virginia having a team one because the areas are so small and two because major franchises are located very close. West Virginia is close to the Redskins and Maine is a part of New England and they have the Pats. Plus 50 NFL teams. Thats a bit much.

Answer 2

As said before, most of the answer is cost v. gain: If it costs someone about half a million or more dollars to start a team, and there isn't anyone to go to the game, why try? It's one of the reasons why Virginia is the most populated state without a professional team of any sort (don't claim that we get Washington, they send all their stuff over to Maryland). We don't have a large population center; we're spread all over the state, most too far from any one place to attend a game, so it's not worth the money to build a team somewhere.

Answer 3

it is not very easy to make a new franchise in football (it costed 800 million to make the houtan texans, and that was just out of the owner's pocket, thats not including all the money Houston had to pay and the money the NFL had to pay)
and there are only 32 teams (not 50 teams). but the team locations are usually in cities that can afford to help teams get started, or has a good fan base. like puting a team in hawaii won't have as big of a fan base, unlike in california has so much people that 3 teams are there and all three have very strong fan bases.

Answer 4

For plenty of reasons, most of them having to do with logistics.
1. Is it really doable to have teams travel to Alaska and Hawaii?
2. With 50 teams, how many divisions would you need and what would the schedule look like (regular season AND playoffs)?
3. Are there really cities in Alaska, North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, etc. that are financially able to sustain NFL franchises (read: attendance)?
4. Would NFL fans be able to tolerate a lower level of play with the talent spread out over 50 teams?

Those are just a few of the reasons such a thing would be logistically impossible.

Answer 5

If they thought there was enough of a market for it they would try. But in sparsely populated areas like Wyoming and in states with mostly small towns they just don't feel their would be enough of a fan base to support it.

For example the league still has blackout rules which means if a game doesn't sell out or sell X number of seats it won't be televised. Games that aren't televised won't attract too many decent sponsors. Without television and advertising revenue the team just won't make money.

Answer 6

Well, think about it. Wyoming has a sparse population, for the team to make any money they'd have to round up almost every person in Wyoming to get to every game.

That's a bit of an exaggeration, but technically Cheyenne has just under 500,000 people, and to fill up a 100,000 person stadium you'd have to get one out of five people to go. The same would probably ring true in Alaska and Nevada.

Also, how would you schedule games in Hawaii? They're so far behind us time-wise that it'd be difficult to coordinate and buy airtime.

Answer 7

Well for starters there aren't 50 teams. Now cut it to 48(imagine having to travel to Alaska or Hawaii) and still that would be too many teams. One of the big things is money, you also need to find a city that is large enough.

Answer 8

Only major TV markets have Football Teams, & the only Major Market not to have one is Los Angeles. They are the #2 major market, behind New York.

Answer 9

the only word for this answer is MONEY they need close to 900 million dollars to just get the team started, plus the team has to have fans to get the money back and they need talent, thats where alot of states go out, but it would be cool to have one for each state, but once again money is the answer.

Answer 10

cost way to much
some states hve 2 or 3 teams