Cheaters sometimes win

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- To read the nation's sports pages this week, you would think that the New England Patriots had been caught spying for al Qaeda, not simply taping the signs that the New York Jets defensive coaches were using to signal their overmatched players last Sunday.

"This caper would permanently tarnish the Patriots dynasty in the court of public opinion," wrote Phil Sheridan in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The actions by the Patriots coaching staff violated a previously little-known league rule and could cost the team a first-round draft pick. In addition, the franchise was fined $250,000 fine while coach Bill Belichick was slapped with an additional $500,000 fine.

The scandal "will cast a long shadow on the franchise's Super Bowl legacy," wrote Jon Saraceno in USA Today.

Even in the Pats' hometown, Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy wrote "Belichick and the three-time Super Bowl champion Patriots must live with the label of 'cheaters.' The Lombardi trophies are tarnished."

But for all those ruminating about how the Patriots' gold-plated brand has been tarnished, the fact is there is barely a ding in that brand's shine.

The team won't lose a penny of their millions of dollars from sponsorships, ticket sales or local broadcasting rights due to this scandal.

While Belichick is likely to feel some pain writing his check, the Patriots can probably find its fine money in the seat cushions around its executive offices.

Forbes estimates the Patriots franchise has had an average annual operating profit of more than $45 million since its run of championships began earlier this decade. According to Forbes, the Patriots are worth $1.2 billion, making it the nation's third most valuable sports franchise.

"The brand is as strong as it ever was," said sports marketing consultant Marc Ganis. "It's only a modest ding, and that is only because they were held out as the model NFL franchise from top to bottom. "

Jim Kane, a brand loyalty consultant for the firm Brookeside, who has done work for Major League Baseball in the past, said sports teams enjoy customer loyalty that most companies can only dream of, one which isn't damaged by scandals such as this one.

Sportswriters are always predicting that fans will be turned off by such bad behavior in sports, such as use of performance enhancing drugs, or labor work stoppages, players leaving one team for another in the pursuit of multi-million contracts or criminal activity like the Michael Vick dog fighting case. But fans keep coming back for more.

Even losing doesn't shake fan loyalty as much as it does the level of ticket sales. A teams' customers will still consider themselves fans, even if they don't want to watch as often due to the losses. A team would have to be caught trying not to win to shake that loyalty.

"The hype over this, the talk that their brand took a huge hit because of this, is way overblown," said Kane. "Sports are very very different from other kinds of consumer products."

While this story has dominated sports pages this week, most U.S. sports fans probably missed the story that the McLaren-Mercedes Formula One racing team has been hit with a $100 million fine and is being blocked from competing for a championship in that sport this year, after one of its chief designers was caught with designs of a rival team's race cars in his home.

The McLaren-Mercedes team was a favorite to win the championship, which would have brought it an additional $100 million.

But the head of the team seemed to shrug off even those far more significant fines at his press conference, while proclaiming his team's innocence and intention to appeal the penalty.

"Our commitment to winning races is undiminished," Ron Dennis, the CEO of McLaren Group, said Thursday. "That's what we exist to do -- to win races."

That obviously doesn't justify cheating. But as long as sports fans around the world reward their teams, players and coaches with more revenue whenever they win, those in the business of sports will keep doing whatever they can to try to win.