MLB and the Players Association did not come to a deal yesterday, again, some more, and MLB canceled another week of games. The reports were that they weren’t too far apart, but MLB demanded the MLBPA come to a decision on a potential draft of international players, and the MLBPA missed the deadline, so alas, it would be another week until the season started.
The reports all came from the owners, as filtered through friendly reporters, so enjoy the complimentary 25 ounces of Morton’s salt that comes with them.
But as we know, the best, most successful rich people all love to make deals. So if the players are holding out just because they think the deal “isn’t good enough” or whatever, then the owners will have to look elsewhere. They’ll have to find a way to make a bunch of money off the players’ labor without the players. They’ll have…to get an app for that.
Okay, Apple TV+ is more of a streaming service than an app, but the old and not that funny reference stands.
The deal with Apple, in which two games will be broadcast exclusively on Apple TV+ every Friday, will last seven years (though Apple can opt out after the first or second year) and earn MLB $85 million per year. The deal with NBC, which presumably will mean select Monday and Wednesday games are broadcast non-exclusively on Peacock, will last two years and earn MLB $30 million per year. Combined with MLB’s other media deals, the league will be earning 26% more on media rights than they did last year, or in raw numbers, an extra $400 million or so, bringing total national TV revenue leaguewide to $1.96 billion.
On the other hand…
Lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-yous. On the one hand, every team makes $65 million on national TV deals alone. That’s before attendance, before merchandise, before even local TV deals. Also on that hand, the Braves’ financial records — the Braves are theo nly team owned by a publicly traded company and therefore the only one that legally has to show their finances to the public — have shown the team to be wildly profitable in every year other than the no-fan 2020 season.
On the other hand, a bunch of rich guys say they’re not that rich, and trust us, you guys. How will we ever work through this dilemma???
This is just another example of the owners grabbing as much as they can for themselves while simultaneously crying poverty and acting offended when people don’t believe them. They are making these massive deals for people to watch baseball players play baseball. Said baseball players will only get a part of those deals if they take it. Otherwise, all this money goes straight into businessmen’s pockets, and then they buy up real estate with it, and use the money from those real estate deals to make more money until they win The Money Game and are crowned Kings Of Money.
Shout out to the very first King Of Money, Croesus! You started a hell of a tradition, buddy.
The CBA negotiations right now are mostly being framed as the players saying, “We want,” and the owners saying, “No, we want.” But that’s not really true, is it? Really, the players are saying, “You should,” and the owners are saying, “Make us.” All this money is coming in. There is a new revenue stream just about every day, it seems like. Apple, Peacock, sponsor patches on uniforms, crypto, crypto, crypto.
Who is creating the value? Who is getting the money for it? If the answers to those two questions aren’t the same, then oh boy, something’s wrong and someone’s gonna be unhappy. Nothing could make more sense.