We're basically getting 50-60 man MLB rosters with the taxi squad

[vcsgrizzfan]

Players don’t get ‘bonuses’ to their pay in good years when the teams and league does better than expected. Why should they ‘share’ in the losses now in a bad year? They’re not owners. Owners are the ones who signed up for that risk. They should bear that cost for one year or risk long term franchise valuation hits to their teams, which is ultimately what they care about far more than yearly profits. Asking them to take less than a prorated salary in this case is a totally idiotic and billionaire sympathetic take.

Also, owners just expect the players to go along with this while not opening up their books. Sure, just take us at our word that we’re suffering catastrophic losses here, because that’s always a wise move to take ownership at their word. If they’re not even willing to open their books and show all revenues, there’s not a chance in hell the players agree to this. I don’t think there is even if they do but it’s pretty obvious the owners have a lot to hide.

Also, go fuck yourself House. Watch my boots, pal.

You shouldn't conflate normal operating seasons with what goes on now. In a normal environment, both sides accept a relatively small variation in profitability. The numbers are pretty predictable, at least in totality even if there might be larger misses in either direction for individual franchises.

This is not the situation.

Revenues are likely dropping at least 70% and as I illustrated in the math in posts above, pro rating makes no sense. The owners have a significant financial incentive to not play the season at all if that is the alternative.

Yeah, but that financial incentive is greatly shortsighted when them locking the players out causes their franchise valuations to plummet as fallout from that.

Let’s see if they actually open their books to an audit. I bet they don’t because they have plenty to hide. They aren’t losing anywhere near what they claim. Again, the fact that they projected a ‘loss’ even before COVID tells you all you need to know and anyone who trusts owners is an absolute fool.

We aren't going to agree on this.

I am an owner of a private company. I would NEVER disclose specific financials unless I was selling the business.

In this case, they can likely have some intermediate step that allows some transparency in revenues with an independent auditing firm or something akin to that. There will be complex issues. For example, Rogers Communications owns the Blue Jays and the local TV contract may reflect non market rate programming charges because of tax advantages where the revenue and expenses are realized. Expert auditors will have to decide appropriate splits.

It's a complex exercise and personally, I think a global approach has to be taken in the interests of time and it doesn't have to be called a "revenue share", but players have to accept that pro rating salaries is not economically feasible.

[rileymartin]

Of all of the major professional sports in this country, MLB pays the highest percentage of revenue to it's players...The NBA and NFL cap the amount of revenue going to their players...


The owners want to salvage a season, as I suspect most players do too...To somehow suggest that the owners should take all of the loss is laughable...

[Kevin]

Of all of the major professional sports in this country, MLB pays the highest percentage of revenue to it's players...The NBA and NFL cap the amount of revenue going to their players...


The owners want to salvage a season, as I suspect most players do too...To somehow suggest that the owners should take all of the loss is laughable...

That’s not true at all. No one knows what percentage of revenue the players get because none of the teams have ever opened up their books, besides the Braves I think since they are owned by a public company. MLB players have likely been getting far less than everyone else, but only now in a bad season do teams want to ‘split’ revenues.

vcs - I strongly recommend you read this fangraphs article. They pretty throughly pick apart the notion that MLB is losing all of this money - there certainly wouldn’t have even been a discussion about having a season if what they say were true. They may lose some money paying their prorated contracts but given they made anywhere from $5 to $7 billion in profits over the last three years, I’m not feeling any sympathy for them. The money is there. Players don’t get more money in good times (in fact player salaries have declined for two straight years while revenues went up $1 billion), they shouldn’t have to bear the costs of bad times either.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/parsing-mlb ... lion-loss/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[rileymartin]

Of all of the major professional sports in this country, MLB pays the highest percentage of revenue to it's players...The NBA and NFL cap the amount of revenue going to their players...


The owners want to salvage a season, as I suspect most players do too...To somehow suggest that the owners should take all of the loss is laughable...

That’s not true at all. No one knows what percentage of revenue the players get because none of the teams have ever opened up their books, besides the Braves I think since they are owned by a public company. MLB players have likely been getting far less than everyone else, but only now in a bad season do teams want to ‘split’ revenues.

vcs - I strongly recommend you read this fangraphs article. They pretty throughly pick apart the notion that MLB is losing all of this money - there certainly wouldn’t have even been a discussion about having a season if what they say were true. They may lose some money paying their prorated contracts but given they made anywhere from $5 to $7 billion in profits over the last three years, I’m not feeling any sympathy for them. The money is there. Players don’t get more money in good times (in fact player salaries have declined for two straight years while revenues went up $1 billion), they shouldn’t have to bear the costs of bad times either.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/parsing-mlb ... lion-loss/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

NBA players are getting something like 48%...MLB players get around 54%...

[vcsgrizzfan]

Of all of the major professional sports in this country, MLB pays the highest percentage of revenue to it's players...The NBA and NFL cap the amount of revenue going to their players...


The owners want to salvage a season, as I suspect most players do too...To somehow suggest that the owners should take all of the loss is laughable...

That’s not true at all. No one knows what percentage of revenue the players get because none of the teams have ever opened up their books, besides the Braves I think since they are owned by a public company.

vcs - I strongly recommend you read this fangraphs article. They pretty throughly pick apart the notion that MLB is losing all of this money - there certainly wouldn’t have even been a discussion about having a season if what they say were true. They may lose some money paying their prorated contracts but given they made anywhere from $5 to $7 billion in profits over the last three years, I’m not feeling any sympathy for them. The money is there. Players don’t get more money in good times (in fact player salaries have declined for two straight years while revenues went up $1 billion), they shouldn’t have to bear the costs of bad times either.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/parsing-mlb ... lion-loss/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I don't believe MLB makes or loses a ton of dough each year, and unlike most pro sports that have far less reliance on local tv contracts (contrast Yankees vs Royals for example), there is tremendous variability in franchise revenues. It's a flaw that makes competitive balance brutally difficult over time.

The competitive nature of the owners and sports in general almost inevitably means that owners in totality will spend to near the breakeven point or worse unless they collectively bargain not to. It's been shown over and over again in various pro leagues.

If you believe in totality MLB is truly making huge profits, we definitely will never be on the same page, or even close.

[Kevin]

Funny, you say there’s no profits in baseball, yet a shitty franchise like the Royals just sold for $1 billion. Hard to fathom how that would happen in a league that makes ‘little to no profits’.

FYI, baseball has a huge competitive problem right now. Seemingly half the league is tanking because it’s massively profitable to do so, given the revenue sharing and luxury tax structure. So I totally disagree with that assumption that the competitive nature of the owners drives them to spend near the break even point or to lose money. In fact, you’ve seen the opposite in recent years as even big market teams have curtailed their overall spending, in spite of record revenues and they hide behind the notion of being analytically driven. You also just had one of the top teams and typically biggest spenders in the sport dump their best player in decades over money. Again, that’s not a move to compete, but a move to increase profits.

[vcsgrizzfan]

Funny, you say there’s no profits in baseball, yet a shitty franchise like the Royals just sold for $1 billion. Hard to fathom how that would happen in a league that makes ‘little to no profits’.

FYI, baseball has a huge competitive problem right now. Seemingly half the league is tanking because it’s massively profitable to do so, given the revenue sharing and luxury tax structure. So I totally disagree with that assumption. You also just had one of the top teams and typically biggest spenders in the sport dump their best player in decades over money. Again, that’s not a move to compete, but a move to increase profits.

Owning sports franchises has almost always been more about ego than profits and franchises trade at multiples not seen in any other "normal" business.

Baseball has serious structural problems because there is nowhere near enough revenue share and luxury tax is damn near a joke. You have it backwards. If you think the likes of Tampa can make an operating profit paying anywhere close to what larger revenue teams can pay, you have very poor understanding of economics in general, and baseball economics specifically.

You disagree. Fine. I give up trying to change your mind and you can give up trying to change mine.

[Kevin]

The teams are also riding a wave of profitability that will help offset any downturn from the delayed season. MLB profits are at record highs, with the average team operating profit—earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda)—rising 25% to $50 million last year, thanks to flat player costs and increased revenue of $16 million per team on average.

The No. 1 Yankees generated $683 million in revenue in 2019, $127 million more than the second-place Dodgers, who also posted the second-highest revenue in the league. The Houston Astros had the highest profit at $99 million, and only the Miami Marlins lost money on an operating basis by our count, with a loss of $6 million, compared with 2013, when there were 11 moneylosing teams, according to Forbes data.

The Cubs appreciated almost five times more in the decade that followed and are now worth $3.2 billion, putting the team at No. 4 on the Forbes list of the most valuable teams in baseball. They’re not alone, with the average MLB team value rising 4% from last year to $1.85 billion. While the rise is the smallest increase since 2010, when team values rose just 2%, Forbes data show that the average team value is up nearly fourfold from a decade ago. An investment in the S&P Index rose less than 2.5 times before dividends.

You can go to bed now. No profits eh? Exactly one team lost money last year and this guy is actually saying most teams operate in the red? Thanks for the laugh.

[AbeVigodaLive]

The wealthy Pohlad family bought the Minnesota Twins for $44M back in 1984.

The franchise is now estimated to be worth $1.3B. I know there's some fuzziness in there and it's much more complicated... but there seems to be something else involved more than an ego trip for this family.



[Note: My dad used to run into old man Carl back in the day. He always paid for stuff in cash, with money wrapped in a rubber band. He was always offered a deal by one of my dad's friends for popcorn. Carl always took the deal.]

[Kevin]

The Tampa Bay Rays - whom you specifically called out as being unable to make money in the current revenue structure - made $68 million in operating income last year.

Anything else you wanna be so blatantly wrong about?

[vcsgrizzfan]

The Tampa Bay Rays - whom you specifically called out as being unable to make money in the current revenue structure - made $68 million in operating income last year.

Anything else you wanna be so blatantly wrong about?

Funny that you accept numbers now when in another breath you claim all the numbers are fantasy. There isn't a hope in Hades Tampa is remotely close to making that kind of dough. You're believing fantasy.

[rileymartin]

The Tampa Bay Rays - whom you specifically called out as being unable to make money in the current revenue structure - made $68 million in operating income last year.

Anything else you wanna be so blatantly wrong about?

How do you know that? I thought the MLB didnt open their books?

[Kevin]

The Tampa Bay Rays - whom you specifically called out as being unable to make money in the current revenue structure - made $68 million in operating income last year.

Anything else you wanna be so blatantly wrong about?

Funny that you accept numbers now when in another breath you claim all the numbers are fantasy. There isn't a hope in Hades Tampa is remotely close to making that kind of dough. You're believing fantasy.

Oh okay. Sure thing. Call it fantasy when you’ve been proven blatantly wrong. Tampa spends almost nothing on payroll and receives a good chunk of revenue sharing, in fact it’s pretty easy to see why they’re profitable. But I guess according to you, all owners are benevolent beings and aren’t in the game to make tons of money. Could you be any more naive?

[Kevin]

The Tampa Bay Rays - whom you specifically called out as being unable to make money in the current revenue structure - made $68 million in operating income last year.

Anything else you wanna be so blatantly wrong about?

How do you know that? I thought the MLB didnt open their books?

They are estimates by Forbes, so if anything the numbers are underrepresented here. MLB doesn’t have to disclose all of their sources of revenue, so it’s likely they made even more. Regardless, vcs is flat out wrong.

[vcsgrizzfan]

Of all of the major professional sports in this country, MLB pays the highest percentage of revenue to it's players...The NBA and NFL cap the amount of revenue going to their players...


The owners want to salvage a season, as I suspect most players do too...To somehow suggest that the owners should take all of the loss is laughable...

That’s not true at all. No one knows what percentage of revenue the players get because none of the teams have ever opened up their books, besides the Braves I think since they are owned by a public company. MLB players have likely been getting far less than everyone else, but only now in a bad season do teams want to ‘split’ revenues.

vcs - I strongly recommend you read this fangraphs article. They pretty throughly pick apart the notion that MLB is losing all of this money - there certainly wouldn’t have even been a discussion about having a season if what they say were true. They may lose some money paying their prorated contracts but given they made anywhere from $5 to $7 billion in profits over the last three years, I’m not feeling any sympathy for them. The money is there. Players don’t get more money in good times (in fact player salaries have declined for two straight years while revenues went up $1 billion), they shouldn’t have to bear the costs of bad times either.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/parsing-mlb ... lion-loss/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I just finally glanced over some of that, and it is absurdly biased. He claims that the owners are hugely overestimating the cost of not playing in front of fans. Well, I'm not sure what an average ticket price is, but let's say that it's $20 and that the average fan spends another $10 in merchandise, beer, hot dogs, parking etc. These are very modest assumptions. If you had 35,000 fans in the park, that's 1.05 million right there. That's a little over $500k per team right there. Are those silly assumptions? In addition, you don't have nearly as much ballpark advertising revenue obviously. I have no idea how much that is per game, but it's not chump change. The $640k in lost revenue per team might be a stretch, I don't know, but it sure as hell isn't a big stretch. These are averages of course. The Florida Marlins ain't losing because nobody shows up, but the Dodgers might lose way more than 640k playing in front of an empty stadium.

As I've alluded to in other posts ITT, baseball has a major systematic issue in that unlike football or even hoops which has much better revenue sharing and a much smaller discrepancy in the value of local broadcast rights such that you have to be extremely lucky to compete from a small market revenue base. The Rays are unbelievable in how they consistently field really competitive teams on a shoestring budget. Unfortunately, the broken economic model means that they, along with many other major league franchise, are essentially feeder systems for the larger revenue teams.

I think that problem will remain forever with MLB. The fight has been fought and lost.

[AbeVigodaLive]

Not really related... but I'm not sure $10 gets you much more than a water at today's pro sports venues.

I'm pretty certain even a hot dog and water runs slightly more than that.

[vcsgrizzfan]

The Tampa Bay Rays - whom you specifically called out as being unable to make money in the current revenue structure - made $68 million in operating income last year.

Anything else you wanna be so blatantly wrong about?

Funny that you accept numbers now when in another breath you claim all the numbers are fantasy. There isn't a hope in Hades Tampa is remotely close to making that kind of dough. You're believing fantasy.

Oh okay. Sure thing. Call it fantasy when you’ve been proven blatantly wrong. Tampa spends almost nothing on payroll and receives a good chunk of revenue sharing, in fact it’s pretty easy to see why they’re profitable. But I guess according to you, all owners are benevolent beings and aren’t in the game to make tons of money. Could you be any more naive?

Dude. I've made my living analyzing companies, industries and balance sheets for over 35 years. I'm not the naïve one here. I can do mathematics.

[AbeVigodaLive]

Funny that you accept numbers now when in another breath you claim all the numbers are fantasy. There isn't a hope in Hades Tampa is remotely close to making that kind of dough. You're believing fantasy.

Oh okay. Sure thing. Call it fantasy when you’ve been proven blatantly wrong. Tampa spends almost nothing on payroll and receives a good chunk of revenue sharing, in fact it’s pretty easy to see why they’re profitable. But I guess according to you, all owners are benevolent beings and aren’t in the game to make tons of money. Could you be any more naive?

Dude. I've made my living analyzing companies, industries and balance sheets for over 35 years. I'm not the naïve one here. I can do mathematics.

So, as in the Twins case I referenced earlier... is the family's payday only when they finally sell the team for $1.29B more than they paid for it?

[vcsgrizzfan]

Of all of the major professional sports in this country, MLB pays the highest percentage of revenue to it's players...The NBA and NFL cap the amount of revenue going to their players...


The owners want to salvage a season, as I suspect most players do too...To somehow suggest that the owners should take all of the loss is laughable...

That’s not true at all. No one knows what percentage of revenue the players get because none of the teams have ever opened up their books, besides the Braves I think since they are owned by a public company.

vcs - I strongly recommend you read this fangraphs article. They pretty throughly pick apart the notion that MLB is losing all of this money - there certainly wouldn’t have even been a discussion about having a season if what they say were true. They may lose some money paying their prorated contracts but given they made anywhere from $5 to $7 billion in profits over the last three years, I’m not feeling any sympathy for them. The money is there. Players don’t get more money in good times (in fact player salaries have declined for two straight years while revenues went up $1 billion), they shouldn’t have to bear the costs of bad times either.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/parsing-mlb ... lion-loss/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I don't believe MLB makes or loses a ton of dough each year, and unlike most pro sports that have far less reliance on local tv contracts (contrast Yankees vs Royals for example), there is tremendous variability in franchise revenues. It's a flaw that makes competitive balance brutally difficult over time.

The competitive nature of the owners and sports in general almost inevitably means that owners in totality will spend to near the breakeven point or worse unless they collectively bargain not to. It's been shown over and over again in various pro leagues.

If you believe in totality MLB is truly making huge profits, we definitely will never be on the same page, or even close.

Just for fun, I Googled MLB profitability and found a Forbes article that estimated average EBITDA (earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization and taxes) and it's 29 MM per team ON AVERAGE according to them. I have no idea how they reach those numbers since it's an extremely complex thing to analyze and will have a lot of assumptions because public data isn't available in many cases. That would mean the entire industry had an EBITDA for approximately 1BB in the year they analyzed (I think it was 2018). After deductions for taxes, interest on what was paid for the franchises and depreciation and amortization, I don't know what that shrinks to, but "probably" something like $700mm. I don't know, but that doesn't strike me as anything surprising. It strikes me as pretty close to what I would have guessed, maybe a little higher than I would have guessed.

[rileymartin]

The Tampa Bay Rays - whom you specifically called out as being unable to make money in the current revenue structure - made $68 million in operating income last year.

Anything else you wanna be so blatantly wrong about?

How do you know that? I thought the MLB didnt open their books?

They are estimates by Forbes, so if anything the numbers are underrepresented here. MLB doesn’t have to disclose all of their sources of revenue, so it’s likely they made even more. Regardless, vcs is flat out wrong.

So then when estimates point to MLB giving their players are larger percentage of revenues compared to other pro sports, that is bullshit, but when estimates help your narrative they matter?
Dude, you are all over the place...