Bears take exception to Forbes ranking

Bears president Ted Phillips took exception with a recent Forbes Magazine article that called the cornerstone franchise of the NFL as a "financial flatliner" and criticized the business operation of the organization.
Speaking at a live broadcast of the team's weekly Monday show on WBBM-AM 780, Phillips defended the Bears and cited the success of the club - Forbes ranked the Bears ninth in the league with a value of $1.07 billion - despite playing in the NFL's smallest stadium.
Of course, Phillips was the man behind the reconstruction of football jerseys
Soldier Field for the 2003 season when the Bears knew at the time they were going smaller as other organizations were going bigger or planning for bigger with their own stadiums.
Photo: Bears president Ted Phillips (right) watches a training camp practice with chairman Michael McCaskey. (Phil Velasquez/Tribune)
"There is a lot of misinformation, comments made by people who are completely uninformed about our business," Phillips said at the event in the Walter Payton Center, the Bears' indoor practice facility at Halas Hall. "From my perspective, when you have the smallest stadium in the NFL and you are able to even by Forbes' calculation be in the Top 10, I think that shows that we're doing an excellent job of maximizing our revenues from every source possible, maximizing the utilization of all of Indianapolis Colts jersey
our resources and being able to have enough resources to compete on the field in terms of competing for player talent.
"So I think overall it was a very misinformed article. I am very proud of the situation we have financially, the support of ownership. The Bears are going to always be financially competitive and we're always going to be innovative and on the cutting edge of everything we do so that we can maximize the value to our fans and to give us the best chance to win on the field."
According to the article, the Bears could be worth another $800 million and should be the most valuable franchise in the NFL based on the fact that they're in the league's second-largest market and the Giants and Jets have to fight for turf in New York.
"The Bears are one of the least innovative teams in the NFL," Marc Ganis, the president of Chicago consultancy SportsCorp, told Forbes.
That also didn't sit well with Phillips.
"I can start in a lot of different areas, the reality is when we built Pittsburgh Steelers jersey
Soldier Field, we weren't allowed to have naming rights at the stadium. I think we were the first team to come up with the presenting sponsor of Bears football, which is (a major bank)," he said. "The skylike suite that we have, we were the first team in Chicago to come up with an all-inclusive price for a premium seating. Every Chicago team has since followed suit. Those are just two areas.
"Our Web site is cutting edge, our Bears broadcasting is cutting edge. We do things technologically to stay ahead of the curve and that I think is only going to serve our fans well and our corporate partners.”