The failsons and finance brokers who own MLB franchises seem ready to destroy the league to make themselves a little richer—and too many fans may take their side.
  • jqubed@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    I can’t read the whole article because of a subscriber login, but the author is complaining about the looming imposition of a hard salary cap in baseball, in response to the Dodgers’ spending.

    Have other U.S. sports been ruined by a salary cap, though? I found baseball kind of boring back when the Yankees were constantly winning by dramatically outspending everyone else. Moving the dominance from the nation’s #1 market to the #2 market doesn’t seem particularly interesting. It feels like we see more variety in winners—and smaller market teams—in other leagues. MLB has had more variety in recent years, perhaps because moneyball became a more popular way to compete, but if we go back to one team outspending everyone else and constantly winning, then it feels like things get boring again.

    • pimento64@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      The teams share a vast amount of revenue, not all of which is disclosed outside of the league and owners; so much in fact that MLB actually just spun off MLB.TV as its own company so that they wouldn’t have to disclose its net income in the upcoming CBA negotiation. The bare minimum that every MLB team is guaranteed to take in even if zero tickets get sold this year is nearly $100 million, and credible insiders say it’s well more than double that in reality. MLB is a legal monopoly made up of an extremely corrupt cartel of colluding businessmen and they absolutely do not have any intention of presenting their finances in any remotely fair or accurate light. A salary cap would benefit the owners, and should be opposed unconditionally on that basis alone. Personally, I’m team hard salary floor with a luxury tax soft cap.