MLB’s Public Fight With Players: A Timeline
On March 26, MLB and the MLBPA reached an agreement with respect to playing the 2020 season. The parties were mostly silent for a few weeks regarding financial matters, with much of the focus on when and how the season might be resumed and played safely with the threat of COVID-19 still looming. But operating in the background were increased concerns over lost revenues in the event of games or an entire season played without fans in attendance.
With those concerns has come some anxiety that a public debate on the fate of millions, even billions, of dollars will be perceived by fans of the sport as unseemly, especially when set against the backdrop of the suffering the pandemic has inflicted on so many. But how have the terms of that debate come to be known? With the MLBPA in the position of reacting to proposals offered by the league, I thought I might examine the how and when of MLB’s public claims. Below, you’ll find excerpts from pieces that ran at a variety of publications showing how MLB has attempted to negotiate or portray its financial situation publicly since reaching the March agreement (links are in the date)
Manfred said about 40% of operating revenue derives from gate and gate-related areas, such as luxury suite rentals, concessions, parking, signage, and program sales and advertising. Going forward with a plan to play in empty stadiums likely would lead to another negotiation with the union, led by former All-Star first baseman Tony Clark.
“I talked to Jeff Wilpon today, the owner of the Mets. Go Queens. Go New York,” [New York Governor Andrew] Cuomo said. “I said, ‘Why can’t we talk about a baseball season with nobody in the stands? Why can’t you play the game with the players?’ I think it would be good for the country. I think it would be good for people to have something to watch and do to fight cabin fever. And it’s something I’m going to pursue. Apparently Major League Baseball would have to make a deal with the players, because if you have no one in the stands, then the numbers are going to change, the economics are going to change.”
A league spokesperson said that “both parties understood that the deal was premised on playing in stadiums with fans and the agreement makes that clear.”
There are owners who have privately said that without readjustments they would lose so much more money, why even play the games.
“Our clubs rely heavily on revenue from tickets/concessions, broadcasting/media, licensing and sponsorships to pay salaries,” Manfred wrote in an email Monday, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “In the absence of games, these revenue streams will be lost or substantially reduced, and clubs will not have sufficient funds to meet their financial obligations.”
Although an agreement between the sides on return to play exists and includes a section on players receiving prorated sums of their salaries, multiple owners have suggested that it could cost them more to play games than it would not to play them and said they believe the agreement between the sides could allow them to pursue pay cuts from players.
[T]o have games just on TV for the whole season for many, many reasons is not practical. – Randy Levine, team president, New York Yankees
Some teams contend that they could actually lose money if games are played. Their rationale is that local and national TV money will not cover their operating costs. And if that’s the case, they would like players — who already have agreed to be paid a prorated portion of their salary depending on the number of games — to take an even greater pay cut.
“If we ended up playing and playing in front of full fans, for 82 games, it makes total sense that we would pay players’ full salaries,” one industry executive said. “If you’re in the more extreme where we have to play empty everywhere, that’s half the revenue that would have come in that’s not coming in anymore. We weren’t equipped or budgeting to pay full salaries for that.”
As things stand, league officials say that on average, for every incremental regular-season game played without fans in 2020, teams would spend more money on player salaries than they would earn in revenue.
Without the players making such a concession, league officials say they will spend more on player salaries than they would earn in revenue for every incremental regular-season game played without fans.
MLB has said it will lose more money by keeping the pay prorated without fans and is averse to playing games in that situation.
Major League Baseball owners, with an abundance of optimism that baseball will be played this year, are scheduled to vote on a plan Monday that will require teams to share at least 48% of their revenue with the Major League Baseball Players Association this season, two people with direct knowledge of the proposal told USA TODAY Sports.
The people, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were unauthorized to discuss details, said the historic revenue-sharing plan is integral to diminish revenue losses with games potentially being played without fans beginning in July. MLB officials say that teams are expected to lose about 40% of their gross revenue from ticket sales, concessions and parking.
“We lose money on every single game (without fans),” one league official said. “We have to propose that they take something less than they already negotiated.
“We’re talking about heavy, heavy losses,” one owner told USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity because negotiations are private. “There are teams that would lose about $100 million during the regular season if we played with no fans and the players’ salaries stayed the same.”
MLB owners, saying they could lose as much as $150 million per club during the regular season if players don’t restructure their salaries, agreed Monday to propose a 50-50 revenue sharing plan instead of paying them pro-rated salaries.
Tom Ricketts told season ticket holders that 70 percent of the Cubs revenue comes from game day operations / ticket sales/ fans in the stands. He went on to say with half the season gone 15 percent of gross revenues would be the take with no fans.
[P]laying in empty stadiums is not a great feel for us economically, but our owners are committed to doing that because they feel it’s important that the game be back on the field. – Rob Manfred, on CNN
Angels owner Arte Moreno is particularly insistent the league should not re-start without economic concessions from the players, sources say.
Major League Baseball told players their prorated salaries would contribute to an average loss of $640,000 for each game over an 82-game season in empty ballparks, according to a presentation from the commissioner’s office to the union that was obtained by The Associated Press.
Teams say the proposed method of salvaging a season delayed by the coronavirus pandemic would still cause a $4 billion loss and would give major league players 89% of revenue.
A March 26 conversation between MLB and the union in which MLB portrays the union as acknowledging that a new negotiation was needed regarding how players would be paid this season could serve as an email version of a smoking gun.
The players have already agreed to prorate their salaries, costing them about half of their annual salary, but the owners insist without additional concessions they will lose money playing games without fans.
The players would make more money for every regular-season game played under the current arrangement and therefore could ask the league for an increase from the proposed 82 games. But the league says unless players take another cut, it will lose money for every additional game.
Major League Baseball dropped a revenue-sharing plan, and instead introduced a sliding scale of compensation to the Major League Baseball Players Association on Tuesday afternoon, the first time the two sides have formally discussed economic issues in an attempt to open the pandemic-shortened season by the July 4th weekend.
The plan, three people with knowledge of the proposal told USA TODAY Sports, proposes to pay players a prorated percentage of their salaries, with the players who make the most taking the biggest salary cuts. The three people spoke only on the condition of anonymity because negotiations are ongoing.
The timeline above certainly isn’t exhaustive; many of the pieces I’ve linked to also include quotes from agents, players, and union representatives, though mostly in response to the public positions MLB has taken. Some of the information has a name behind it, but much of it doesn’t. MLB has a pretty clear public plan, one that attempts to emphasize owner losses in an abbreviated 2020 season.
Over and over again, we hear owners or the league’s representatives asserting that MLB and its teams will lose more money playing regular season games without fans than they will if those games aren’t played at all. When MLB had the opportunity to present and support such claims, their arguments fell considerably short of being convincing. It’s possible that in private, MLB is putting forth good faith arguments, but their public PR battle against the players suggests otherwise. If a public fight is bad for the sport, why do those with the biggest financial interest in the game and its future keep waging one?
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
Owners will always prefer to negotiate in public because fans will naturally support their position. It doesn’t matter whether one side has billionaires and the other side has millionaires. For most people, that money is out of reach. What matters to them is relative closeness. Fans want to believe players are more like them, so they are more resentful of their wealth (and any expression of self interest). When players demand their fair share, they aren’t being a part of the team. The MLBPA needs to be cognizant of this disadvantage. Their best tactic is to present fair proposals, remain unified, and, above all else, avoid pleading their case to the public.
To your point about fans feeling closer to the players, I will add that this dispute (and any labor dispute) is explicitly about the players being paid. If you think about it, it is also implicitly about how much the owners will make, but all of the proposals and media coverage will be about player salaries. And upon reading that, we all immediately imagine that we were being offered that much money to play baseball. Or half that much. Or a quarter.
So I agree with your last point. The players can’t win on public opinion, so that can’t be their goal.
I don’t quite agree, though I see what you’re saying; I personally think billionaires losing some money for the rest of us to watch baseball is a great idea, and I fully support the parasites who bought teams because they think it’s a money-printing magic trick selling their teams if they don’t want to provide baseball.
eventually, the bigger fool model leads you to the rogues gallery that is modern MLB ownership.
“If a public fight is bad for the sport, why do those with the biggest financial interest in the game and its future keep waging one?”
I know this is a rhetorical question, but the owners are smart to wage a public fight because it’s a guaranteed win. Fans root for the laundry. And virtually all of us would be thrilled to play baseball (or do almost anything else) for a fraction of what players are paid (even the league minimum looks pretty darn good next to my salary). And in the context of Covid, many fans have been laid off, had their pay reduced, or are working in unsafe environments for low pay, so it’s hard to feel too much sympathy for people being asked to work in a comparatively safe environment for hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.
To be clear, I’m very much on the side of the players here. But even knowing how heavily the economics of the game are balanced in favor of the owners, I’m not immune to being insanely envious of the working conditions the players are complaining about.
One thing I read in all of that is the owners consistently reminding of their viewpoint that the March agreement was premised on fans in the stands and, absent that condition, the deal would be renegotiated. Some may not like their position, but they have been consistent going back to April as to what the March agreement says.
Either way, both sides are negotiating and negotiations mean trade-offs. It will be interesting to see which trade-offs are ultimately agreed to.
Other sites are reporting a lot of quotes from agents, who are the least reliable narrators in all of this. So thanks for not falling into that trap.
And thank you for presenting information fairly and letting reasonable minds draw their own conclusions. That is sorely missing in many places these days.
Every time the owners cry poverty they should be required to pay back a portion of the state and local tax breaks they’ve gotten on their stadium deals.
How about as a condition of all the public money and tax breaks, the team be required to open its books as public records for the next ten years? And not just the actual “team,” but all of the affiliated RSNs, parking garages, etc. that put money into the owner’s pockets.
Would love to see a city push this next time a team comes begging for stadium money. I mean, that’s just good solid government accountability, looking after the investment of taxpayer dollars.
This does happen, to a degree. As part of continuing disclosure requirements related to debt offerings, teams do have to report relevant financial performance. For example, the Yankees are required to report their gate revenue as well as the payment they make in lieu of taxes each year.
TLDR: the owners are full of shit, have been hoovering up massive profits for well over a decade, and now that those margins are threatened they want the players to take the hit.
Also, Tom Rickets is full of shit. Seventy percent my entire ass.
Rickets instead of Ricketts — LOL. I hope this was intentional.
If the owners want the players to help them subsidize some of their “expected” losses for 2020, maybe the MLBPA should ask for an ownership stake to be held by the Union.
I think it may actually be illegal for unions per se to own companies. Workers of course can own stakes in the companies they work for, but I don’t know if the union is allowed to be the vehicle for that.
No. UAL unions took ownership of UAL briefly through their ESOP. The Unions (Pilots, Flight Attendants, Mechanics) immediately gave themselves fat raises, 9-11 crushed demand, and oil prices surged thus making UAL re-enter bankruptcy. They then hired professional managers again to get the company back on track so it could IPO again. Unions can own their place of employment — it never works well since their interests aren’t aligned with the interests of a going enterprise.
The billionaires who own teams should be asked if they view themselves as investors just out for their big payday, or if they see themselves as providers of a product, baseball, to a market starving for said product. Is this capitalism, fellas, or what? The owners sound like a mob syndicate, “F you, pay me” and all that. Their behavior continues to be disgusting and un-American.
Disgusting for sure, but very American unfortunately.
Def disgusting, i wouldnt say american….i would say very NYish. Oh what do you know, that is where the HQ is.
Should they be obligated to operate at a substantial loss? Would that be American?
What would be “American” (Read: Capitalist) would be if MLB wasn’t a cartel, which would mean that anyone who was willing to provide baseball would be able…
Car Company:
Owner – “I can’t operate this business, it will cost me more than I’ll make
Other rich guy – “I think I can do it, I’ll just hire all your employees and put out an open for business sign
MLB:
Owner – “I can’t operate this business, it will cost me more than I’ll make”
Other rich guy – “I’ll do it, lemme just hire all your players and hang an open for business sign”
Owner – “Go F yourself, all my employees are under exclusive contract, even if I’m not paying them, if I won’t provide this product, nobody will. Besides, even if I did let you hire my employees, all the other owners would refuse to interact with you, have fun playing baseball with one team sucker!”
First off, I want to say that I think the MLB and it’s owners are being greedy and they’re the ones not negotiating in good faith.
But a lot of this animosity is due to the gross incompetence of union negotiators displayed during those March negotiations. They and the owner negotiators failed to first define the assumptions and terms & conditions framing the agreement. They (the union) are now crying bloody murder because they are claiming the MLB should have assumed all potentially dire situations when they signed that agreement. I call BS. It is both sides’ negotiators job to explicitly state how things in the agreement apply to certain conditions. They should not be getting paid six figures to negotiate if they are seriously angry because they have the audacity to assume the owners were thinking exactly like they were. The purpose of an agreement is to limit assumptions and understand exact mutual expectations from both parties.
I had high school presentations where the first presentation slide was listing assumptions that framed my problem or argument. I blame both sides for not agreeing on common ground during those March negotiations, but it pisses me off that the union is telling the players and media the big bad owners are going back on their word. I’ve yet to hear a union rep state that the owners negotiated in March assuming no fans. No, they’re saying the owners should’ve inherently known exactly what was going to happen only a short week or two after this pandemic hit the US hard. What a crock of s***. Like I said, I think the mlb is in the wrong right now with these current negotiations, but those union negotiators are incompetent morons and this has been proven with the last CBA and now this.
Good to see some balance to the comments on this issue.
It certainly isn’t going to come from Edwards, Jaffe or any other writer at FG … at least based on the amount of water-carrying for the MLBPA authored here on a daily basis.
-The players are in no way “partners” … they can’t even get the books opened.
-The owners are greedy, have been forever, it seems … and feel they have leverage now.
How Tony Clark still has a job is beyond me.
Put another way … would LeBron James allow things to disintergrate so badly between NBA players and the league? Would James allow the owners to formally propose a deal that could divide stars vs. rank-and-file?
IMO… no to both. Then, why don’t Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, Francisco Lindor, etc. take public leadership roles on behalf of the players? Players and MLBPA aren’t blameless.
One thing that’s always put me off about the MLBPA is their “rock management” style of negotiating. Instead of getting out in front of the situation, they just sit and wait for the owners to bring a proposal, and then if they don’t like it, instead of a counter-offer, they just say “no”, and wait for the owners to bring something else. Lawyers are taught that you don’t make your client negotiate against himself. If your client makes an offer, and the adversary just says “no”, then you don’t budge off of the initial offer. Until the adversary comes back with a counter-proposal, there is nothing to negotiate.
And after I said that yesterday, I see today that the union is going to come back with a counter-proposal. Good for them.
Looking at this timeline, it hammers home that it started with individual owners talking about how they would lose money, and then it morphed into owners collectively losing money. I’m 100% sure the first one is true, but it looks like they’ve settled on the second one because it plays better and I’m not sure it is true. If I had to guess, I would say that the league made the first deal before these owners asserted themselves/realized how much they had to lose.
Well, they kind of have to… individual owners aren’t authorized to negotiate with the union, so they have to maintain a common front. That said, there’s an awful lot of poor-mouthing, which is sadly typical. I find it hard to believe that the Yankees would lose money with no one in the stands… IIRC their radio broadcast fees along would cover their payroll. On the other hand, I can very much believe that the Pirates would lose money, and the A’s might not make it through the season.
Of course, that’s a problem that ought to be up to the owners to fix. But if the players wanted to be creative and get out front of the situation, they could make an offer something like this: “OK, for 2020, all the players will take a haircut of 10%. That will go into fund that will pay 40% of the salaries for the players of the five lowest-revenue teams, so those teams will see a payroll reduction of 40%. We’ll do this if the other 25 teams will tax TV revenues to pay another 40% for those five teams.” (I have no idea if that math actually works; I’m just using it as an example.) That would force the owners into a situation where they either have to negotiate honestly, or else come out looking like the bad guys. But the union isn’t smart enough to do that.
I think the union could get a lot out of the owners by dividing them. Like, do you think Reinsdorf or Steinbrenner the Current enjoys bailing out the fucking Wilpons?
I don’t think it’s possible to divide them so much, but it does point to a pretty big problem with the revenue sharing model. Clearly, the owners need to get their house in order, but they’re just taking it out on the players instead like a good cartel instead.
There is a huge revenue imbalance. That’s absolutely true. The union could, if they were smart, use that as a knife to twist, and force the owners’ hands on revenue sharing (and, along with that, payroll floors). After all, there have got to be people in the union who are concerned about the viability of several of the franchises. After all, if a franchise goes under, that’s union jobs lost. The players could come out looking good by making owners address the situation.
Theres a big difference between a current ownership lacking the cash flow to pay obligations in the short term and “a franchise going under”. If an owner lacks cash and access to capital, all that happens is they sell the franchise to someone who does have the cash on hand. The asset value of the franchise will still be enormous even if the owner doesn’t have the cash to pay salaries, so there shouldn’t be any kind of problem finding a willing buyer.
The difference between “The A’s don’t exist anymore” versus “The A’s have a new owner” cannot be overstated.
what a total one way article….let’s be real, the reason y we have a season on the books (1994) on the books as incomplete is because the players walked out.,….the reason baseball is the only major sport without a salary cap is the players…..I am not defending the owners, quite frankly I don’t like the owners because they consistently cave to the players….with that said, let’s be real, I am the biggest capitalist on earth, but the reality of everything is the players make what they make because “their” market place is artificial and it’s artificial because we the tax payers pay for the stadiums…if it weren’t for us to pay for those billions in stadiums costs there is no way the players could make what they are making. To me, the players have an obligation at this point, as do the owners to work this out for the benefit of the fans, who want a deversion from what we all have been thru. No one is asking for the players to play for nothing, but do you know how many shut-ins live for sports. Do you know how many vendors, office workers, parking attendants make livelihoods thru major league baseball….To me the responsibility is on both of them and while this article quotes the owners and their nonsense, in the name of fairness I don’t hear in this article the players attitudes that are being reported like” I gotta get my money” Nate Snell, and I don’t want to hear how he might be underpaid compared to other players right now after 100k Americans are dead of a virus, suck it up and play or get the minor leaguers to play…..Respectful Edward Calandro
May 14: “Playing in empty stadiums is not a great feel for us economically, but our owners are committed to doing that because they feel it’s important that the game be back on the field. “– Rob Manfred, on CNN.
Players have short careers, but relatively speaking, lucrative ones (a rookie earns as much in one year as most doctors or lawyers do in three.) Owners however, have much of their lifetime profits from MLB tied up in some day selling their franchises. Most of those franchise resale values will take a hit requiring years or decades of Good Management and Solid PR to recoup the market value loss from missing a full season of MLB.
The billionaires have more to lose, but money means more to the millionaires.
I hope the players kick ownership’s collective ass!
I think the players should tell the owners to sit and spin, and let the hugely overlevered few owners get increasingly desperate.
“There are owners who have privately said that without readjustments they would lose so much more money, why even play the games.”
Yes, indeed, why does the game of baseball exist if not to add an extra digit to a barely-human billionaire’s net worth? Personally, I refuse to participate in baseball fandom unless I can have the profound satisfaction of knowing I’m further enriching the notoriously friendly and community-oriented Ricketts family every time I pay $17 for a Miller Lite at Wrigley. THAT, ladies and gents, is what baseball *really* does for us.
That the owners proposed a sliding scale with high salary players taking a larger cut shows how good they are in playing the PR game.
One way MLBPA should counter this is to insert ‘minor leaguers also must get paid’ into their counter-proposal.
I know MLBPA does not represent minor leaguers, but most of them were minor leaguers at one point and we know some players (e.g. Choo) do genuinely care about them.
To me, it seems inconsequential who wins the PR battle. It’s not like PR points can be parleyed into a victory in the next election. Sure…everyone on this site loves to decide who is right and who is wrong. A PR win can stoke an ego…and perhaps cause the other guy to catch flack from friends and neighbors. But I don’t see much tangible value in it. If owners win the PR battle, where does that leave them? The fans are mad at the players? But the players are the reason people go to games. So maybe people don’t go to the games when they finally get the chance. Victory owners? Perhaps the players really are more likely to cave if they think they are losing the PR battle. But it seems to me that many of the players feel like they are being treated unfairly. So I don’t think they cave easily or promptly…in which case there is no baseball. The owners need a better plan. It makes no sense for them to burn their house down just to put heat on the players. Owners don’t share revenue during times of exceptional profit, and the players don’t want to share “ownership” losses when times are lean. Most players are looking at 50% cut in pay as it is.
Capitalism is great, but it is also cold. Businesses are closing and losing money on a grand scale. It is the type of thing that can happen during times like this to a business owner…which takes nothing away from all of the smarts, hard work, and investment if took to become an owner…of any business, be it of a restaurant or a MLB franchise. It sucks to lose money, but everyday we see stories of people doing just that with honor, dignity, and grace. It is hard to respect the greed, divisiveness, and dishonesty that we see in others. I hope better leadership emerges of both sides, players and ownership, as it is definitely in their collective interests to come together very soon. Waging a PR war is the one thing that they should NOT be doing if they hope to resolve their differences. Seems like a battle that can’t be won.
“There are owners who have privately said that without readjustments they would lose so much more money, why even play the games.” I think this gets at the real issue. They don’t care about the games, full stop. What’s the real value added of baseball games for billionaire owners? It’s getting to strut around luxury boxes where millionaires gather to see and be seen. For the owners, no fans may mean less replenishment of monetary capital, but it also, and perhaps more importantly, means absolutely no social capital. The owners don’t see why people would attend the games except to make money off of them or better yet to be seen making money off of them. That’s the attitude we’re dealing with here.
Aren’t we dealing with the wholly human attitude of “I don’t want to lose a ton of money”?
I’m calling shenanigans on the league. There is no way I’m buying a $4B loss on it’s face, but I did some work to try and figure out if I was being unreasonable.
Premise: For the owners to lose $4B by playing an 82-game schedule plus a 14-team playoff format. Their total expenses would have to be $4B less than their total revenues.
First question: What are the expenses required to run an MLB franchise?
1) Player Salaries*
2) Front Office Salaries/Wages
3) Coaching Staff Salaries*
4) Gameday operations expenses*
5) Facility expenses
6) Utilities
7) Transportation for players/coaching staff*
8) Housing for players/coaches*
9) Food for players/coaches*
10) Daily stipend for players/coaches*
11) Taxes
12) League dues
13) Stadium leases
*Expenses incurred by conducting gameplay
I will note here that the above list is not comprehensive, but should cover most of a team’s expenses. There would be additional expenses this year related to specific pandemic response items.
Second question: What are MLB’s revenue streams?
1) Gameday operations*
2) TV/Radio Broadcasts*
3) Merchandise sales
4) Licensing agreements
5) MLB Network
6) In stadium advertising
*Revenue generated by conducting gameplay
Only two of these are ~entirely~ dependant on games being played, but obviously the others are negatively impacted by a lack of games. As with expenses, the list is not comprehensive, but should capture most revenue streams.
So now we can mentally grasp what the actual equation is. Our problem, as outsiders, is that we don’t know the details necessary to conduct the math. However, there is enough information present to draw a loose conclusion as to whether or not we believe MLB’s argument that they’ll lose $4B.
I’m willing to wager that the largest expense for an MLB team’s operation is player salaries. Fortunately, we have a pretty good idea of what those represent as expenses to teams. Spotrac very specifically states that the league average for this year will be $136,545,019. That should obviously be taken with a grain of salt, but if you prorate that for the 82-game schedule the number is reduced to $69,115,379.50. For the sake of argument, let’s round it up to an even $70M.
For the MLB to lose $4B this year by playing an 82-game schedule without fans in attendance, they would lose, on average $133,333,333.33 per team. If player salaries are $70M then the other expenses incurred by operating the league under that premise would need to be roughly an additional $63M PLUS whatever their revenue streams would be. Fortunately, MLB stated that player salaries would represent 89% of revenue, so that math works out to roughly $89M.
So MLB’s argument is that playing an 82-game schedule will cost them roughly $222M per team. I haven’t explicitly seen them state outright that the sliding-scale approach they’re arguing for would get them to the break even point. But even if every player was making the pro-rated minimum under that proposal you’re still looking at nearly $8M in player salaries per team, so with all this math the teams would still lose money.
Third question) How much money would teams lose if they didn’t play games?
Most of team’s expenses are certainly related to conducting gameplay, but this would definitely be in the millions of dollars on stadium leases and taxes alone.
Final question? If MLB is arguing that they’re going to lose money either way, what is the acceptable number for players to negotiate to in order to get a fair deal and actually play baseball?
In order to do that the MLB needs to show players all of their financial details.
MLB is saying that 40% of their revenues come from game attendance which include parking and food concessions. They will save 10-12% of revenues (this is a guess) from stadium expenses they don’t have to pay. They’re trying to get MLBPA to absorb half of the remaining 30% revenue hit, as I understand it.
Went to my first game in 1962. Let me give some of you younger guys a piece of advice. Spend your time learning a 2nd language or learning useful mechanical/home craftsman skills. Spend time with loved ones and pets. Read. Forget about renewing satellite radio or MLB.tv. Forget about paying $35 for parking or $10 for a hot dog. Forget about hats and jerseys; you have enough.
Eventually high schools and colleges will resume playing along with youth baseball. Satisfy your jones there where the love of the game still reigns. Both sides of this mess DO NOT care about you or this country. They are obtuse, selfish jerks who do not appreciate their blessings. They have killed the golden goose. Sayonara.
extremely poor leadership currently in MLB. Manfred is easily the worst commissioner in all major sports.
its amazing to me how short sighted the leadership is in MLB. Their latest proposal essentially paints the highest paid players and the faces of MLB as evil bad guys. Its really unbelievable what Manfred is doing to the game. Trying to get the low level guys to turn internally on the high paid stars…its really sickening.
They should be doing the opposite and propping the highest paid stars up like they’re Michael Jordan or tiger woods….trying to to turn Miggy, Trout, etc into marketing phenomenons growing the MLB brand. Instead they’re doing the opposite destroying the star players and making them look like the bad guys.
We don’t have to go crazy here. The scenario is pretty easy to understand. MLB owners estimate 40-70% of revenues as coming from gameday revenue. What’s the true percentage? I’m sure it varies a lot from team-to-team, but let’s say it’s 50% to keep the math super-simple. Those goes to zero, so total revenues will be 50% of normal, right from the beginning.
We also know (from the MLBPA, and other sources) that player salaries are typically about 50% of revenues in normal times. It would already be higher than that in this season, if player salaries are pro-rated, due to the denominator shrinking: expanded expenses from building new clubhouses, administering tests, and other coronavirus-related expenses that (AFAIK) the players are not offering to pay for at all, with no new revenues.
But let’s ignore that. There are also *many* possible revenue reductions from other sources (lower merchandise sales, less corporate support, higher future taxes to pay for Covid-related fiscal deficits, etc), but let’s ignore those for now too.
Under full pro-ration, in this without-fans scenario, the players are demanding 100% of all MLB revenues and insisting that they will not negotiate. Not 100% of profit. Revenues. Before adding in the other costs.
I’m sorry, but no matter what you think about the greed of the owners — generally overstated, IMO, since there are usually far more lucrative places for billionaires to park their money than pro sports — this is not reasonable. Which is — shocker! — why the players reject a 50/50 revenue split, which most neutral observers would probably accept as fair.
Obviously the owners aren’t going to do this, nor (IMO) should they. Sports teams get into a lot of trouble when they load up on debt in uncertain economic times. Hell, even if teams did load up on debt this year they’d just pay for it out of lower future payrolls anyway.
Now the caveat: maybe the numbers aren’t so bad. Maybe gameday revenues are more like 35-40% of the total. But that only shifts the math a little. Even the lowest estimate of gameday revenues I’ve seen might not have the owners coming close to breaking even with pro-rated salaries and no fans, much less making any meaningful economic gain. The players are going to have to concede more — probably a lot more — or the season won’t be worth it for the owners.
The players that don’t share in the losses are the biggest parasites. They want to be paid for not playing? Full price without fans in the stands? Everyone is a liberal until it hits their own pocketbook.