Can Favre turn around Jets' business fortunes?

David Sweet • E-mail

The most exciting storyline of the 2008 National Football League season looks to be Brett Favre’s performance in the bright green uniform of the New York Jets.

The surefire Hall of Famer has been transplanted from tiny Green Bay to the biggest metropolis in America. Whether he can lift the mediocre Jets to the playoffs has been debated on talk shows and New Jersey barstools. But a bigger issue remains: What will Favre's impact be on the franchise's business fortunes in the upcoming years?

No doubt picking up Favre for a 2009 draft choice was a short-term boon to the Jets. Once the trade was announced, the team sold thousands of No. 4 jerseys within hours on its Web site, which promptly crashed from the demand. (In fact, Favre’s Jets’ jersey is the NFL’s best seller since April’s draft — his Packers’ jersey ranks second.) The Jets received priceless publicity from tabloids and TV shows, supplanting the Super Bowl champion Giants as the football talk of the town. Favre's first training camp workouts drew quadruple the usual number of fans.

But in the NFL, a star player is far less likely to jolt a franchise's long-term revenues than, say, a first-round pick in the NBA draft. First, there are 22 starters for a pro football team; the NBA offers five, meaning one player can change the whole complexion of a team. Second, football players are helmeted and hardly visible to the television audience, unlike in basketball, where players' faces are known by the fans during games and in advertisements.

Take LeBron James. He has been able to turn around the Cleveland Cavalier franchise. They drew fewer than 12,000 fans a game in the season before he arrived, lowest in the league; now they pack Gund Arena’s 20,000-plus seats. The Jets already sell out their games, as do most NFL teams.

Slide show Fabulous Favre Top moments from quarterback’s record-breaking career.

Of course, with the Jets prepared to play in a new stadium in 2010, personal seat licenses are a crucial component. Though none will be required for the upper deck, the Jets hope to generate close to $400 million from PSLs, which is merely charging fans to retain their ticket privileges for two preseason games and eight regular-season contests. Although PSLs are common in the NFL today, the Jets have battled a public relations problem trying this approach.

Some have mused that Favre could boost PSL sales. Granted, he might persuade a small slice of excitable fans who were on the fence. But realistically, season-ticket holders on the whole are enraged they have to pay a special fee for the first time beyond the already-pricey ticket package. And by the time they sit down for the opening game in 2010, Favre will be close to 41 years old. He'll either be a creaky quarterback or out of football altogether.

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