April 5, 2010 at 10:56 am
CirquedeSQLeil (4/5/2010)
Here's to hoping the Yankees have a perfect season. 0-162 😉
Yeah, whatever! 😛
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April 5, 2010 at 10:57 am
R.I.P. Mike Cuellar, 1937-2010
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April 7, 2010 at 11:10 am
Okay, first, I'll freely admit that my primary reason for posting is to make sure this thread doesn't get relegated to Page 2! 🙂
Anyway . . . I came across this article, and I thought it would make interesting discussion.
While I don't disagree with the article says, realistically, I don't see it happening. The (too-powerful) players union would never allow it.
So, what would be the best way to get salaries under control? Is a salary cap the answer?
Discuss.
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April 7, 2010 at 11:16 am
I think they need some type of salary cap in place. Something that makes things more on par with the NFL so that more teams have a chance.
Some small market teams have done well, Oak, TB, MIN, FL, but overall they haven't. It would be good to see different teams in there.
but the flip side is that when things like SA gets to the NBA finals, the ratings tank. They're not interesting to lots of people. So is that good for the sport?
TV is where most of the money is. It's not local fans, it's the national audience. So how do you grow that? I think what needs to happen is some of what the NFL does. You use a salary cap to spread the stars. You prevent Peyton Manning, Reggie Bush, Adrian Peterson, and Steve Smith from all signing on the same team.
April 7, 2010 at 11:36 am
Actually the NFL is significantly different from the other major sports in that the revenue streams are national. In other sports the much higher number of gates and the existance of local broadcast contracts (vs ten dates and a national-only contract) mean that differences in local markets are going to affect available cash. Most of the football money is from a couple huge TV deals that are divided equally, allowing Green Bay and sometimes Los Angeles to afford teams. 😉 But in baseball (or basketball or hockey) a local broadcast deal in Milwaukee is going to be orders of magnitude smaller than what's possible in New York. And other things like average regional incomes or the number of available Fortune 500 companies to sell luxury boxes to or how tightly the league controls franchise moves (to take advantage of market differences) all affect how much money is on the table. The Dallas Cowboys make a lot more from their stadium than the Vikings, but the Vikings can run their franchise without selling a seat. Contrast that with the money generated by a new stadium and years of sellouts in Cleveland or Pittsburgh versus the cable deal a bad Mets or Orioles team rakes in. The number of eyes drives the latter much more than anything a smaller market can create on the field and at the gate. Compound that with the related party transactions model the Cubs and Yankees (and Braves and...) employ where they own the cable network and can manipulate the amount they pay themselves for the rights. At that point you can choose which of your businesses (network or team) can take a loss or profit for tax purposes (or if you want to win, or if you want to take more money out of the system or whatever.) The NFL negotiates the big contracts centrally, so things are equal. The largest things baseball has to split up are rights to the playoffs/All-Star game, Saturday and Sunday games and the newest and potentially best of them all, the Advanced Media properties (ie online revenues). They're making hundreds of millions on them, and it's going up healthily and teams are sharing those. I think the smartest thing MLB has done in ages is taking that from the individual teams and parcelling it out to everyone to establish some of the good stability of the NFL model.
EDIT: And I haven't even started on how badly caps and cap management has poisoned football and basketball. Yeesh, what an abomination...
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Shut up he explained.[/font]
- Ring Lardner
April 7, 2010 at 11:40 am
I agree on the salary cap. I would also like to see revenue sharing implemented in baseball like in the NFL. I think the revenue sharing has made a world of difference in the level of competition.
Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
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April 7, 2010 at 11:42 am
Revenue sharing in baseball has been wonderful because it doesn't stop you from spending, it just makes it outrageously more expensive. That way if it's your year you can try to do something historic, but most teams can't afford to do it all the time. And frankly that type of team (who am I kidding: NYY and BOS) will make money and spend money anyway, so revenue sharing is about the other 28 teams. In that regard it's worked very well.
[font="Arial"]Are you lost daddy? I asked tenderly.
Shut up he explained.[/font]
- Ring Lardner
April 7, 2010 at 11:51 am
I think revenue sharing is good in theory, but I don't think it's worked in practice. The problem is that the small-market owners (Kansas City, Pittsburgh, etc.) aren't using the revenue to make their teams more competitive; rather, they've been pocketing the extra money.
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April 7, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Baseball would be better with a true open market: uncapped salaries, no draft, and uncapped ownership. The reason that the Yankees can generate so much money is because they have an exclusive right to that market.
With real competition, new teams would start up in New York, and you might end up with eight teams sharing the market. They would have to share their fan base, and the competition would drive down ticket prices, TV revenue, etc. to the level that small market teams could generate.
The current situation exists because Congress and the Supreme Court have tolerated anti-competitive practices that would not be allowed in any other industry or business. Imagine if you were the only company allowed to sell software in the city of New York? How is that different than being the only baseball team in a city?
April 7, 2010 at 12:52 pm
I hear you, Michael, but there's two things there. First, it would suck, IMHO, if all the teams only existed in big markets.
Second, it's a private club. They wouldn't necessarily have to schedule games with new teams. We'd have something like the Negro leagues, which were a mess in many ways. Unbalanced schedules, players leaving teams and moving on constantly. I think it would be worse.
April 7, 2010 at 1:21 pm
There is no reason to think that what you described would happen.
It would allow teams to exist in small market with say 1-2 million people in a metro area because large markets would have many teams with each having a share of fans equal to the number of fans in the small markets.
Players would be free to sign long term deals or short term deals and teams could keep players by paying them enough to stay. If teams have to compete to keep smaller fan bases they would not have the money to throw around like the Yankees do now, so there might not be any more movement than there is now. Players salaries would tend towards a level that allow the teams they play for to stay in business. If a team pays too much, they would go out of business and allow someone else into the market.
The Negro leagues were not the result of competition. They were the result of an anti-competitive monopoly that allowed teams to set and enforce arbitrary rules, like no blacks in major league baseball.
There is no reason baseball couldn't operate as a franchise system, but just not able to stifle competition by refusing to allow competing and new franchises. Maybe increase competition by having tiered divisions, so that weaker teams move down to a lower division and stronger teams move up the next year.
April 7, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Perhaps. I could be wrong. I'm just not sure that it would be better. I think we'd end up with more fractured leagues, less baseball on TV, and less competition. How does someone organize divisions and ensure compliance with rules? With fitting into a league? What does it say for fans, or players, when a team doesn't comply?
Not that the current system isn't broken. It certainly could use some changes, but I'm not sure a free for all would work.
April 16, 2010 at 7:23 am
We're almost at the two week point! I know it's still early, but any thoughts on the season so far?
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April 16, 2010 at 7:28 am
MIN/OAK on top, Moneyball!!!
Actually it's quiet here in CO with the NFL draft, Nuggets and Avs in the playoffs. Haven't been to a game yet, but I think there's a Thur afternoon one in few weeks I might hit.
April 16, 2010 at 11:24 am
Michael Valentine Jones (4/7/2010)
Baseball would be better with a true open market: uncapped salaries, no draft, and uncapped ownership.
Salaries are already uncapped.
Getting rid of the draft would be the dumbest thing possible for the sport. The quality of the product is all about the quality of the players. Get rid of the draft and you eliminate about 50% of player development. The incentive wouldn't exist for teams to spend all that money on player development. The smaller market teams would simply lose the players immediately and the bigger market teams don't do player development as it is, they just buy free agents. If anything, the sport needs to figure out fair ways to more heavily incentivize player development.
Nothing in life is ever going to be totally fair and no sports league is without major flaws, but I'll take baseball's current system over anything else out there. I think it sucks that in the NFL a team like the Cardinals can cheap-skate cash in on league revenue for decades and all the sudden decide to go to a Super Bowl. At least in baseball the teams that don't care are kept out of the playoffs.
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