Sorry Baseball Owners, You Don’t Get it Both Ways

With baseball attempting a return, there are still some kinks that need to be ironed out. We’ve seen the proposals, playing without fans, expanded rosters, using regular home stadiums, traveling with extra minor league players. The largest idea, which the owners have yet to propose, is cutting player salaries.

When baseball was shutdown there was the agreement to prorate player salaries for the 2020 season. Meaning, if the season was cut in half, the players would earn half their annual pay. Fair is fair, right?

Well, apparently not for the owners. They are concerned that without fans attending games, and paying for tickets, there will be an even larger reduction in overall revenue. They’re right, there will be, but taking that out on your workforce isn’t the best idea.

Here’s the thing, player salaries aren’t tied to league revenue. The players do not earn more when revenues increase. This is evidenced by the fact that players are earning a smaller percentage of overall league revenue today than they were just 10 years ago. This is because of the larger piece streaming plays on budgets, along with digital services, and other monetization methods today’s smarter organizations utilize.

These methods have built the league up over $10 billion in revenue in 2019.

So while owners have seen record revenues and profits, players haven’t come seeking larger portions of that profit. Sure, there has been a record number of salaries that exceed $20 million on an annual basis, but even with that salaries hardly scratch the surface of the money coming into the game.

So its pretty crummy, to say the least, for owners to come to the players today and ask them to accept less because they (owners) might see negative numbers on the balance sheet where they weren’t before.

So cut the shit baseball owners, you can’t have it both ways.

Jamie Baker

Hi, I’m Jamie and I run this site. I’ve published work on multiple other sites and through that experience I decided to create CHICAGO style SPORTS. We truly aim to speak for the Chicago fan. Additionally, as a member of the IBWAA (Internet Baseball Writers Association of America) you can be assured that all content you read will be written with incredible integrity.

See author's posts