Jerry Jones is doing what he always did: trying to profit. He’s very good at that. He is a billionaire for several reasons: business acumen, luck, courage and a willingness to do things like raise the price of natural gas at a time when the people of Texas need it most.
As Texans continue to spend days without power or heating, the shale drill Comstock Resources Inc., a publicly traded company in which Jones is the majority shareholder, has, according to NPR, sold gas at “superpremium prices”. It’s been “how to win big,” said Roland Burns, president and CFO of Comstock, in a earnings conference call on Wednesday.
This is a matter for Jones, just as defensible for him as – I’m being hypothetical here, of course – another billionaire claiming 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 a way to score points. (Winning Super Bowls is the other, although he hasn’t done that in almost three decades.)
OK then. Let’s score the score.
The citizens of Arlington contributed $ 325 million to finance Jones’ theater, AT&T Stadium. Jones pays the city a paltry $ 2.5 million a year to operate the stadium. This business was supposed to be an economic generator for Arlington, and perhaps it was. But an implicit reason for deals like these is that a team doesn’t just belong to the franchise owner. A team belongs to the citizens who support it. Right.
Now you see how Jones is treating Texans in times of need. We can call it betrayal, but it’s really just an extension of the relationship between Jones and the Texans. It is impossible to arrange a fair deal when one party is in it for love and the other is in it for money. Years ago, when Jones wanted a stadium contract, he enlisted Roger Staubach into the public effort, a clever way to make the vote seem like an act of fan loyalty, without explicitly calling him that.
Jones knew what he was doing at the time and he certainly knows what he is doing now. If all the clothes suddenly disappeared from the state, Jones would start selling Cowboy 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 he wants to test the free agency, or even the next time you shell out money to buy merchandise.
The Dallas Cowboys are America’s team in the NFL Films narrative, and Jones has artfully managed to monetize that image without using the real nickname. He bought the Cowboys not just because he wanted an NFL team, but because he wanted it is NFL team, the one with arguably the largest fan base in American sports. He knew that the Cowboys meant something to people. He loves it. He is a master at making money from it.
Jones won three Super Bowls at the beginning of his tenure at Cowboys and has desperately tried to win a quarter since then. In this way, his desires seem to be aligned with those of his fan base, but still: He’s doing this for him, not for them. He paid most of the stadium’s expenses, but not because he wanted to boost Arlington’s economy. He wanted the most sophisticated stadium in the world. In the 11 years since its inauguration, the value of the Cowboys franchise has gone from $ 1.6 billion to $ 5.7 billion, according to Forbes.
That would be enough for most of us. However, Comstock Resources is selling gas at prices ranging from $ 15 per thousand cubic feet to $ 179 per thousand cubic feet, a profit margin of between 600% and 7,500% compared to pre-crisis levels. The idea that people may desperately need the gas and cannot afford it probably didn’t even occur to him. The market worship church has a narrow definition of sin.
Jones should be embarrassed, but billionaires are not embarrassed by what they consider good business. They are embarrassed when many people criticize them or when public shame is so great that the good deal turns into a bad one. Cowboys fans can show Jones how angry they are, reducing financial support for the team. Logic says they should. The story says no. Jones is betting that he can make money by inflating the prices of the very people he wants to represent. In that sense, he is an appropriate owner of Team America.