So, the Dodgers are insanely rich

[dougdirt]

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?

[kaldaniels]

Originally Posted by dougdirt

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.

[MikeThierry]

Originally Posted by dougdirt

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?

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.

[dougdirt]

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.

[dougdirt]

Originally Posted by MikeThierry

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.

[MikeThierry]

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.

[MikeThierry]

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.

[dougdirt]

Originally Posted by MikeThierry

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.

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?

[traderumor]

Originally Posted by MikeThierry

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.

[MikeThierry]

Originally Posted by dougdirt

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.

[kaldaniels]

Originally Posted by MikeThierry

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.

It's one thing for the Reds to lock up a Votto in today's market. However if the Dodgers can easily top an offer by 20 million a year if they choose, that's another story.

[dougdirt]

Originally Posted by MikeThierry

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.

Tougher to be smart when baseball limits your spending both in the draft and in international free agency, where smart teams were able to spend a lot of money. Now things are tiered to being "fair" with young talent, but for established talent it isn't even close to being fair. We are going to start seeing the rich just get richer because of these new "young talent" spending rules while the established talent spending is an open market to the highest bidder. So unless some team comes out and starts paying all of their minor league coaches like Major League ones, it is going to be real tough to gain an advantage by simply being smarter than other people when it comes to developing cheap talent.

[MikeThierry]

Originally Posted by kaldaniels

It's one thing for the Reds to lock up a Votto in today's market. However if the Dodgers can easily top an offer by 20 million a year if they choose, that's another story.

I still think though that teams cannot buy championships. They can buy their way into the ability to be competitive but when the Yankees when on their run in the 90's, a good chunk of their team was home grown talent. After a while, they started to get the big name free agents and they haven't been as successful. The thing is about spending all of this money on free agents is that the players that are in free agency are generally on the downslide of their career. The big market teams will never really get the kind of production from a given player that the same player gave to another team. If the Dodgers want to spend 40 million per year on an aging player, by all means let them do it.

[MikeThierry]

Originally Posted by dougdirt

Tougher to be smart when baseball limits your spending both in the draft and in international free agency, where smart teams were able to spend a lot of money. Now things are tiered to being "fair" with young talent, but for established talent it isn't even close to being fair. We are going to start seeing the rich just get richer because of these new "young talent" spending rules while the established talent spending is an open market to the highest bidder. So unless some team comes out and starts paying all of their minor league coaches like Major League ones, it is going to be real tough to gain an advantage by simply being smarter than other people when it comes to developing cheap talent.

It's a double edged sword. The reason why the Yankees have had, as of recent years, a top 5 to top 10 farm system is because they could outspend everyone in the draft and international signings. Now, I think you will see other teams be able to compete with the Yankees with the new rules. I see your point but on a whole I think it's a good thing.

[MikeThierry]

The other thing I would like to point out is that as these large market team's payrolls expand, so too will the money available in revenue sharing. If the Dodgers spend 280 million on payroll, that means they will have to pay a significant amount for revenue sharing. That means along with these small market teams getting big tv deals (like The Fathers did), so too will their share of money from revenue sharing. Maybe this will be tweeked further down the road to make big market teams pay more but the way it's set up, the big market vs small market scenario will be essentially the same as it is today except with more overall money involved.