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The eye-popping eight-year, $132 million contract given to Detroit Lions wide receiver Calvin Johnson last week is possible under the National Football's League's salary cap thanks to a looming expansion in television revenue.
In December, the league's 32 owners approved new TV deals with Fox, CBS and NBC that begin next year and run through 2022 and have a combined worth of $28 billion. That's a 63 percent average increase for the span of the contracts.
That translates into nearly $2 billion in new annual revenue from the broadcast deals, which is expected to mean an additional $20 million to $30 million in salary cap space per team starting in 2013.
Broadcast revenues are the largest source of the NFL's $9 billion in annual revenue and are split evenly among the league's 32 teams - a measure of corporate socialism aimed at ensuring competitive parity.
The annual salary cap limit, which is $120.6 million for 2012, is indexed against the NFL's yearly broadcast revenue. It was first put in place in 1994.
The league's total broadcast revenue, including deals with ESPN and satellite broadcaster DirecTV, will be about $6 billion annually starting in 2014, according to a December analysis by The Wall Street Journal.
Giving Johnson a new contract to replace the six-year, $55...