MLB is cooked and crooked ... how the Brewers win as much as they do is shocking!

[Turning2]

3 hours ago, SeaBass said:

If the risk were so very high we'd be seeing sales of professional teams more often than we do. And for lower valuations.

It's also all the risks that were taken in other enterprises to build up the capital prior to buying the franchise. To be balanced, I'm also not a huge fan of ownerships that extort tax bases to subsidize their ballparks. 

[Jopal78]

3 hours ago, SeaBass said:

The players are the attraction in an entertainment industry. They should be making very close to half of all profits. Period.

So if they all decamped to the NPB, that league would become the preeminent baseball league in the world, and Major league baseball fans would suddenly be tuning in during the middle of the night to catch the Toyo Carp or Yakult Swallows? 

Or is it just what the  players union’s messaging wants you to believe?
 

The reality is the franchise outlives every generation, loyalty to a team doesn’t end because players leave. Baseball players are more like actors in a very long running play, the stage and the story (rivalries, team heritage collective history etc.) matters more than the cast.

[owbc]

14 minutes ago, Jopal78 said:

So if they all decamped to the NPB, that league would become the preeminent baseball league in the world, and Major league baseball fans would suddenly be tuning in during the middle of the night to catch the Toyo Carp or Yakult Swallows? 

Or is it just what the  players union’s messaging wants you to believe?
 

The reality is the franchise outlives every generation, loyalty to a team doesn’t end because players leave. Baseball players are more like actors in a very long running play, the stage and the story (rivalries, team heritage collective history etc.) matters more than the cast.

If you said that to a Pittsburgh Pirates fan they would probably punch you in the face. 

[ClosetBrewerFan]

JJ Cooper was on a podcast recently suggesting that the owners should be pushing for much greater revenue sharing and a soft floor (minimum player payroll or there will be penalties), but no hard salary cap.  A hard salary cap will be incredibly difficult to get done, so this seems like a much more reasonable approach.  We already have a soft cap (penalties above a payroll level), so why don't we have a soft floor?  As long as revenue sharing provides low income teams with enough money to reach the soft floor, this seems workable.  MLB should encourage teams to want to win so a hard cap disincentivizes that. But more revenue sharing will level the playing field.

[Fear The Chorizo]

5 hours ago, SeaBass said:

They don't need to be happy but is it realistically going to happen? If you think so I fear you have pie in the sky dreams.

I didn't say it would be easy - but it needs to happen.  Multiple years of no baseball season would be worth getting it right this time around.

[biedergb]

There is no singular solution to this problem, as all of them have pros and cons to them. Salary cap and players cry foul and dodgers, Yankees etc lose their edge. Plus it would likely come with players wanting pay day much earlier - like what NFL and NHl did - earlier free agency periods. 

A floor only does so much.  A soft cap is in place with the luxury cap. 

for a fan like me -just allowing your team the chance to lock up a player or two long term is all I can ask for - and designate “franchise player” tags or nba style maximum of “max contracts” could help so one team can’t sign all players to Shohei deals.

but a lot comes from forcing owners to pay, and allowing more of the mlb revenue to flow to all teams. Yes the dodgers and Yankees are the draws of the league but those owners have to realize with brewers, twins, rays, Indians you don’t have as much of interest in baseball as a whole.  It’s not the New York Baseball League or California Baseball League.  Plus if teams bow out, players are hurt with contraction, and they probably want expansion, so that would open the door to more shared revenue from a league side, and then force owners to pay a certain amount and incentive teams to lock of some of their stars.  Baseball was the sport in the 1960s- through 1990s and my favorite era was the 1980s. Back then any team realistically could win, and you knew the players and expected them to be there for years. That benefits everyone so a lot of compromises and some incentives to all parties could happen.  Sadly a band aid will be agreed on and kick the can down the road again.

[Sixtolezcano]

6 hours ago, SeaBass said:

No, we don't, not 100% of it. We don't have to pay anything. People do because they choose to. Advertising and media contracts are a large part of MLB's income. 

The fans (population) who purchase the products from the companies who advertise during MLB programming are really funding the majority of that advertising income. These companies wouldn’t advertise if there wasn’t significant an increase in their own profits (increased cost of cars, alcohol, drugs etc.). So you are indirectly paying for those advertising dollars as well. You must account for that, too.

[JosephC]

2 hours ago, Fear The Chorizo said:

I didn't say it would be easy - but it needs to happen.  Multiple years of no baseball season would be worth getting it right this time around.

For years the big market teams could essentially buy off the small market owners by guaranteeing them a nice revenue sharing check that would ensure that the small market teams would still make a profit.

With the regional sports networks dying off, I'm not so sure the small market teams will be so happy to just get that check anymore.

Attanasio should be spearheading the movement for massive changes.  From his perspective - #1, I used to be able to depend on 38 million of local TV money every year, and then every 5 years or so could depend on a nice increase when it came time for the next deal.  Now I don't know if it I will get 5, 10, 20, 30 million?  It's a major revenue stream that is now totally up in the air.  #2 - From 2018-2019, I had 5.774 million fans in the ballpark.  We are now well past COVID, and in the last two years I've had 5.187 million fans in the ballpark.  My attendance has dropped.  That's over a 10% drop.  #3 - We've averaged 94 wins over the last three years.  There is no way I should have as much economic uncertainty as I currently have with as successful as my team has been recently.

I would have to think there is easily another dozen owners that would feel the same way.  Previously, I think most of the mid-markets would side with the big-markets to keep things rolling along.  But it seems most of the mid-markets have the same local TV contract issues, which would likely swing them away from siding with the big market teams.  And I also think some of the "back end big market" teams like Boston could be so turned off by what the Dodgers have done, that they could side with the small market teams as well.  For the first time in a really long time, labor negotiations might not be big markets vs. small market vs. players.  It may actually be owners vs. players, with the Dodgers, Yankees and Mets being erased because the other 27 owners would be united against them.

At least that is what I'm hoping.  The system is broken and a major overhaul is long overdue. 

[Sixtolezcano]

7 hours ago, SeaBass said:

No, we don't, not 100% of it. We don't have to pay anything. People do because they choose to. Advertising and media contracts are a large part of MLB's income. 

You (the fans) are indirectly paying for the advertising dollars these companies are funneling as MLB income, too, by paying for the increase prices you spend for their products to mitigate their advertising costs (the cost of doing business). That is beauty of capitalism, almost all of this money is initiating from us, the consumer(as always) and not from the advertisers. GREED has been responsible for the high prices spiraling out of control.

[Underachiever]

20 hours ago, Turning2 said:

Generational money....  That term has been invented to rationalize the exorbitant salaries of even the lowest paid professional ballplayers. It's been normalized and now many just accept it. Who in the real world thinks they need to make so much money as to allow their kids, grandkids etc to not have to work? It's just a pride thing, a salary competition between millionaires and billionaires that we pay for

Not to mention that if you earn $5 million, $10 million, that's generational money as well. Maybe not as many generations, and some of your grandkids may have to go to public school, but it's still generational. It doesn't have to be $150 mil and up to qualify as generational.

That said, I'd be no different if I was in that position. Probably.

[Fear The Chorizo]

What i think would go a long way towards improving the health of the game without a salary cap would be for MLB to push game broadcast revenues solely onto their platforms - establish leaguewide contracts with networks/cable/streaming services and do away with team-owned  broadcasts, and then sharing that revenue equally across the league.  Then, setting that shared amount as the salary floor every team has to pay players the following season.  I'd even be ok with allowing current local broadcast contracts to run their course before those teams get looped into the leaguewide revenue bucket - but they'd get none of the shared revenue if their own local/self-owned TV revenues exceed a certain threshold.

 

I dont see why players should be against that....and frankly a vast majority of owners would approve, too.

 

 

[Fear The Chorizo]

1 hour ago, Underachiever said:

Not to mention that if you earn $5 million, $10 million, that's generational money as well. Maybe not as many generations, and some of your grandkids may have to go to public school, but it's still generational. It doesn't have to be $150 mil and up to qualify as generational.

That said, I'd be no different if I was in that position. Probably.

$5-$10million is not generational wealth - im referring to 9 figure guaranteed contracts that only a small percentage of mlb players ever come close to earning, even in today's game.

 

To me, generational wealth is enough for the player and their immediate family to not need to work another day in their life if they so choose, not a few years of big paychecks (which are also taxed heavily) that pulls a family out of poverty but doesnt mean they are independently wealthy no matter what decisions they make with the money over the next 50 years.

[JosephC]

56 minutes ago, Fear The Chorizo said:

I dont see why players should be against that....and frankly a vast majority of owners would approve, too.

Because the MLBPA has always been about not limiting what the top paid player makes.  It's almost like they truly believe that if Ohtani makes 700 million a year, then that resets the top of the market and the next top player makes 710 million, and ultimately, this is the best system for players.  They have always ignored what this does to the salaries outside of the elite group of players.

Meanwhile, right up until the COVID years, every year we heard the MLBPA crying that MLB teams weren't spending enough, and the player's share of the pie was decreasing every year.  I haven't heard very much about that the last two years, and maybe that's only because Dodger spending has been maintaining the status quo.

The NFL CBA gives the players 48% of revenue.  That number only goes up based on newer TV deals.  There are some revenue streams that are exempt from the formula.  I've seen estimates that NFL players eventually get between 46.5% and 47% of all revenue.

It appears MLB total revenue is roughly $12,200,000,000 from various reports around the internet.  I added up the 2025 Year End 40-Man at Cots Baseball Contracts, and the total was $5,276,400,000.  So, if those numbers are somewhat correct, the players are currently getting 43.2% of league revenue.  It they would get a CBA that gave them 45% of league revenue (that would likely be 1.5% - 2.0% less than football), it would be an immediate 213.6 million dollar raise for the players.  Having an NFL type system with a cap and REAL revenue sharing (not a payoff to keep small market teams happy) would definitely limit what the top paid players would make, but overall the numbers do make it look like it would be a better system for the players as a whole.

[SeaBass]

35 minutes ago, JosephC said:

Because the MLBPA has always been about not limiting what the top paid player makes.  It's almost like they truly believe that if Ohtani makes 700 million a year, then that resets the top of the market and the next top player makes 710 million, and ultimately, this is the best system for players.  They have always ignored what this does to the salaries outside of the elite group of players.

Meanwhile, right up until the COVID years, every year we heard the MLBPA crying that MLB teams weren't spending enough, and the player's share of the pie was decreasing every year.  I haven't heard very much about that the last two years, and maybe that's only because Dodger spending has been maintaining the status quo.

The NFL CBA gives the players 48% of revenue.  That number only goes up based on newer TV deals.  There are some revenue streams that are exempt from the formula.  I've seen estimates that NFL players eventually get between 46.5% and 47% of all revenue.

It appears MLB total revenue is roughly $12,200,000,000 from various reports around the internet.  I added up the 2025 Year End 40-Man at Cots Baseball Contracts, and the total was $5,276,400,000.  So, if those numbers are somewhat correct, the players are currently getting 43.2% of league revenue.  It they would get a CBA that gave them 45% of league revenue (that would likely be 1.5% - 2.0% less than football), it would be an immediate 213.6 million dollar raise for the players.  Having an NFL type system with a cap and REAL revenue sharing (not a payoff to keep small market teams happy) would definitely limit what the top paid players would make, but overall the numbers do make it look like it would be a better system for the players as a whole.

I'm not against something like this. I think a lot of folks think I'm anti-salary cap when my feelings are more on the side of them all simply not being able to come to a compromise that everyone agrees with and makes meaningful progress towards parity or balance. It's just how I feel, it doesn't mean I know what will happen. Every prior CBA negotiation has been fraught with tensions, pot shots, strong arming, standoffishness and just plain greed.

I'm a pessimist plain and simple when it comes to labor negotiations being in good faith and seeking a true good system. Not everyone has to agree with that. I'd love to be proven wrong.

I mean, when you're starting out with a lockout, as is universally expected to happen, that's not a great sign, right?

[Fear The Chorizo]

4 hours ago, JosephC said:

Because the MLBPA has always been about not limiting what the top paid player makes.  It's almost like they truly believe that if Ohtani makes 700 million a year, then that resets the top of the market and the next top player makes 710 million, and ultimately, this is the best system for players.  They have always ignored what this does to the salaries outside of the elite group of players.

Meanwhile, right up until the COVID years, every year we heard the MLBPA crying that MLB teams weren't spending enough, and the player's share of the pie was decreasing every year.  I haven't heard very much about that the last two years, and maybe that's only because Dodger spending has been maintaining the status quo.

The NFL CBA gives the players 48% of revenue.  That number only goes up based on newer TV deals.  There are some revenue streams that are exempt from the formula.  I've seen estimates that NFL players eventually get between 46.5% and 47% of all revenue.

It appears MLB total revenue is roughly $12,200,000,000 from various reports around the internet.  I added up the 2025 Year End 40-Man at Cots Baseball Contracts, and the total was $5,276,400,000.  So, if those numbers are somewhat correct, the players are currently getting 43.2% of league revenue.  It they would get a CBA that gave them 45% of league revenue (that would likely be 1.5% - 2.0% less than football), it would be an immediate 213.6 million dollar raise for the players.  Having an NFL type system with a cap and REAL revenue sharing (not a payoff to keep small market teams happy) would definitely limit what the top paid players would make, but overall the numbers do make it look like it would be a better system for the players as a whole.

The idea of full sharing of league broadcast revenues and then laying out a salary floor all teams need to pay in no way limits the ceiling on what the best players can make.  The Dodgers are able to shell out a $70m  per year deal to Ohtani but only pay him $2m per now only because they know their massive TV deal will cover the deferred payments 10 -20 yrs down the road.  

 

Honestly, I dont think MLB needs a cap if they push to fully share broadcast revenues across the league equally.