Financial history of the New York Giants

The New York Giants, an American football team which plays in the National Football League (NFL), have had a long, and at times turbulent financial history. The Giants were founded in 1925 by businessman and bookmaker Tim Mara with an investment of 500 US$, and became one of the first teams in the then five-year-old NFL. Mara passed ownership of the team on to his sons Wellington and Jack after the to insulate the team from creditors. At first the Mara sons owned the team in name only, but they took increasingly larger roles in the organization beginning in the mid-1930s. Tim Mara remained involved in the team's operations until his death in 1959, when his sons assumed full control of the club. After Jack's passing in 1965, his son, Tim, took over his share of the team.

Although the Giants were successful on the field in their initial seasons, they struggled financially. A key event in franchise history occurred in the 11th game of the Giants inaugural season. The Chicago Bears, led by star running back Red Grange, came to town attracting a then pro football record 73,000 fans, and giving the Giants a much needed financial influx. The following year, Grange and his agent formed a rival league and stationed a competing team, led by Grange, in New York. Though the Giants lost $50,000 that season, the rival league folded and was subsumed into the NFL. After these initial struggles, the Giants financial status stabilized, and they led the league in attendance several times in the 1930s and 1940s. By the early 1960s, the Giants had firmly established themselves as one of the league's biggest attractions. However, rather than continue to receive their higher share of the league television revenue, the Mara sons pushed for equal sharing of revenue for the benefit of the entire league. Revenue sharing is still practiced in the NFL today, and is credited with strengthening the league.

After struggling in the latter half of the 1960s and the entire 1970s, the Giants hired an outsider, George Young, to run football operations for the first time in several decades. The Giants on-field product and business aspects improved rapidly following the hiring. In 1990, Jack Mara's son, Tim, who was struggling with cancer at the time, sold his half of the team to Bob Tisch. This marked the first time in franchise history the team had not been solely owned by the Mara family. In 2005, Wellington Mara, who had been with the team since its inception in 1925 when he worked as a ball boy, died. His death was followed two weeks later by the death of Tisch.

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