The NFL’s involvement in Breast Cancer Awareness month has come under fire after claims the league is profiting from the cause. Read more after the jump.
Players have been wearing pink caps, shirts, elbow pads, and boots and flashes of the color have adorned towels and parts of the field throughout October across the U.S.
Fans can buy pink items from the National Football League shop, or bid in auctions for products seen during games.
The proceeds ostensibly go to help support the fight against breast cancer, but critics now allege that most of the cash ends up in the pockets of NFL owners.
The website tells fans they can ‘support the fight against breast cancer with pink NFL breast cancer awareness gear.’
However, Business Week discovered that only 5 per cent of the sales are being donated to the American Cancer Society. If the products have a typical 100 per cent mark-up at retail point, that means the NFL is keeping 90 per cent of the profit from the sale of the items.
Of the money the ACS receives, only 70.8 per cent goes towards research and cancer programmes and a significant portion has to be spent on administration.
This would mean that for every $100 in sales of pink products, $3.54 goes towards research while the NFL keeps approximately $45.
Although the proliferation of pink merchandise clearly helps awareness, these figures may raise some eyebrows when you consider that NFL had $9.5billion in revenue in 2011.
An NFL spokesperson said that while they did not dispute the numbers above, the NFL does not profit from the sale of pink merchandise. Any money that is not donated to ACS is used to cover the costs of its breast cancer awareness programme, A Crucial Catch.
The spokesperson said the NFL has donated ‘more than $3million’ or approximately $1million per year as a result of the programme that began in 2009.
