Word is that Fox Sports and the Dodgers are working on a 25 year, $6-7B deal. That would give the Dodgers, before selling a single ticket, concession, advertisement or jersey, $240-280,000,000 per season.
The Reds aren't making $10M per season right now. The Dodgers are about to get 24-28 TIMES as much as that.
How are small market teams supposed to compete with things like this?
My quick math puts that at 1.7 Million per game (assuming every game is televised - in real life probably 90-95 percent will be). I don't know what production costs ends up being but lets say 300k to make it easy which means each game costs 2 million for FS. Is that profitable? 25 years ago was 1987...look where we are now. What if cable doesn't exist in 2037? This is crazy.Originally Posted by dougdirt
See the Tampa Bay Rays as a model. This trend of large TV deals is going to continue in baseball. The Cardinals, for example, only get 14 million per season with their TV contract. Forbes has estimated that they could get 3 or 4 times that much once they get a new tv deal in a couple of years. Until baseball goes the NFL route with it's TV deals, it's something that we are going to have to live with.
Tougher to even go with the Rays model now that there is a cap on how much you can spend on players in both the draft and internationally. Teams can't just spend on the best players over and over anymore because they see it as a market inefficiency. It is now against the rules to do that. But if team A wants to spend $300M in the Majors, well that is allowed. Want to spend $15M in the draft? Sorry about your luck. Want to spend $7M on international free agents? Sorry, no way Jose.
If the Padres can get a 1.2 Billion TV deal, I'm sure the Reds can string something together. The way TV deals are going now, I don't think many teams will be able to cry poor in the near future.
I really don't have a problem with the Dodgers getting this kind of money. 6 Billion seems realistic for the market size and the media market it has.
While the playing field has been leveling for some kind of "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" reason in the last few years, new TV deals like this are going to tilt the scales again where there is severe disparity in revenue that once again creates the small market blues. These developments seem to be a step backward in the "level playing field" saga.
"Rounding 3rd and heading for home, good night everybody"
We will see. But even still, we are talking 20% of what others are getting.
While they can't cry poor, they can cry "poorer", and really that is what matters. If you can't compete with other teams for free agents, what does it matter?
It's a matter of being smart. Developing talent along with getting impact free agents when you can. I've seen it for over a decade here where I live. There is a model for small market teams to win. GM's of those teams just have to be as smart or smarter than their big market counterparts.
Honestly, I think the new draft rules help the small market teams more than they hurt it.
Before the caps, you had the Yankees and Rangers spending an insane amount of money on amatuer draft and international FAs. At least the playing field is leveled on the draft now. With the cap, I doubt you will see small market teams punting draft picks, or drafting to save money (which was pretty common for Cincy and Pittsburg in the early 2000's). IIRC, part of the new agreement also forbids giving Major League contracts to draftees, which helps everyone out.
The new draft rules are one step towards parity/fairness.. Sure, there's a lot more work to be done, but at least they fixed one facet that they could.
Because if they didn't fix that, Cincy might spend 10 million on the draft, but LA would spend 100...
[Phil ] Castellini celebrated the team's farm system and noted the team had promising prospects who would one day be great Reds -- and then joke then they'd be ex-Reds, saying "of course we're going to lose them". #SellTheTeamBob
Nov. 13, 2007: One of the greatest days in Reds history: John Allen gets the boot!
You explained this better than I did. I agree with pretty much all you said here. The Yankees should never have a top 5 farm system in the position they consistently drafted at. For much of the 2000's though they did have a top 5 farm system with the International signings and the amount they spent in the draft. The way it is now, it could potentially hurt small market teams but on a whole it drastically changes the way large markets can approach the draft. To me, it will hurt big market teams more in the long run than small market teams.
I also think the new rules will bring the cost per draft choice down. I don't see Scott Boras getting the kind of money he used to get for Strasburg and Harper. The cost to do business in the draft will eventually start to fall.
To expand on my previous point, I'll give the example of Robinson Cano. The Yankees spent a pretty decent amount to get him at the time in 2001. Now, all the teams are on the same level playing field to get a Cano type player. The Yankees or any of the large market teams can't come in there is throw their weight around. It's a huge reason why I love the new rules, on a whole.
Baseball isn't going to ever be able to go the route of the NFL because every year another team is signing a 10-20 year TV deal.
How does someone born to parents who worked at a gas station compete with the children of CEOs? Work harder, smarter, social progams (revenue sharing) fall into some luck, etc. It's a steep, steep hill to climb, but isn't impossible.
This is why the Reds gave Joey Votto a 10 year extension. In a few years, $20MM/yr is going to look awfully cheap.
Games are won on run differential -- scoring more than your opponent. Runs are runs, scored or prevented they all count the same. Worry about scoring more and allowing fewer, not which positions contribute to which side of the equation or how "consistent" you are at your current level of performance.
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