Jerry Jones is doing what he has always done: trying to make money. It’s worth a lot. He is a billionaire for many reasons: business vision, luck, fear, and a desire to do things like raise the price of natural gas at a time when the people of Texas need it most.
As jeans continue to spend days without energy or heat, shale drill Comstock Resources Inc., a publicly traded company in which Jones is the majority shareholder, has been, according to NPR, selling gas at “super premium prices. “. It’s been “like getting the biggest prize,” Roland Burns, president and chief financial officer of Comstock, said in a earnings call Wednesday.
This is a business for Jones, as defensible to him as — I’m hypothetical here, of course — another billionaire who claims that not paying taxes “makes me smart.” Jones doesn’t need the money, but the need has nothing to do with it. Making more money for yourself is one way to earn score. (Winning the Super Bowls is the other, though not nearly three decades ago).
Okay. We keep scoring.
Arlington citizens donated $ 325 million to fund Jones’ playhouse, AT&T Stadium. Jones pays the city about $ 2.5 million a year to blow up the stadium. This deal is supposed to be an economic generator for Arlington, and maybe it is. But an implicit reason for these agreements is that a team doesn’t just belong to the franchise owner. A team belongs to the citizenry that animates it. Right.
Now you see how Jones treats jeans in his time of need. We can call it a betrayal, but it’s really just an extension of the relationship between Jones and Texans. It is impossible to organize a fair transaction when one party participates for love and the other for money. Years ago, when Jones wanted a deal with the stadium, he hired Roger Staubach in the public effort, a clever way to make the vote look like an act of loyalty from fans without explicitly naming it.
Jones knew what he was doing then and he sure knows what he is doing now. If all the clothes suddenly disappeared from the state, Jones would start selling Cowboys sweatshirts for $ 1,000 each.
Remember this story the next time your favorite team asks for a new stadium or your favorite player is accused of being greedy because you want to try a free agency, or even the next time you pay cash for merchandise.
The Dallas Cowboys are the American team according to NFL Films, and Jones has prudently managed to monetize this image without using the real nickname. He bought the Cowboys not only because he wanted an NFL team, but because he wanted to that The NFL team, the one with possibly the largest fan base in American sports. I knew the Cowboys meant something to people. He loves that. He is a teacher making money.
Jones won three Super Bowls at the start of his Cowboys tenure and has since desperately tried to win a quarter. That way, his wishes seem aligned with those of his fan base, but still: he does it for him, not for them. He covered most of the stadium’s expense, but it wasn’t because he wanted to boost Arlington’s economy. I wanted the most elegant stadium in the world. In the eleven years they opened, the value of the Cowboys franchise has gone from $ 1.6 billion to $ 5.7 billion, according to Forbes.
It would be enough for most of us. However, Comstock Resources sells gas at prices ranging from $ 15 per thousand cubic feet to $ 179 per thousand cubic feet, an increase of between 600% and 7,500% from pre-crisis levels. . He probably didn’t even think of the idea that people may desperately need gas and can’t afford it. The church of market worship has a narrow definition of sin.
Jones should be ashamed, but billionaires are not ashamed of what they see as good business. They feel embarrassed when a lot of people call them or when the public embarrassment is so great that good business turns into a lousy one. Cowboys fans can show Jones their anger by reducing their financial support for the team. Logic says they should. History says they will not. Jones bets he can make money by popping prices on the same people he claims to represent. In that sense, he is the rightful owner of America’s Team.