I remember years ago a story about a senator or congressman investigating baseball as a monopoly. Baseball claumed they had to work that way or they’d lose even more money.
Things looked so bad that the congressman bought into one of the teams.
This was early internet days so I don’t know if it was a fable or not.
At least based on World Series viewership, baseball is in the shitter compared to where it once was.
These salaries are crazy! It’s one thing for a “star” player to get paid well, but even the mediocre players are now paid well in excess of $1 million. Some pitchers with losing records and high ERAs make $3-5 million. WTF? Some of them only play once every few games and only pitch to a couple batters. It’s become rare for pitchers to throw a complete game too. Guys with batting averages well below .250 also get big contracts. It’s nuts!
Pretty sure Messi is getting a % of Apple TV’s MLS subscriber pass profits. Something to the tune of $50-60 millions per year.
My daughter’s soccer teammates were talking about trying to snag one of the hockey prospects at her college. Apparently one last year is dating a guy making a million plus playing minor league hockey this year. At least according to them.
Another one of them was dating Randy Moss’ son who plays football at her school, turns out not such a great guy though.
I saw on ESPN, that Soto’s deal ($765M) is greater than the combined salary earnings of LeBron James and Tom Brady ($761M).
Owning a major sports team is partly a vanity project, and not just a financial matter. Based on past performance, Soto should increase the Mets’ odds of winning one or more World Series. The Mets’ owner (Cohen) probably does not expect to become the next Steinbrenner, but he could reasonably think this will elevate his status in the NY sports pantheon.
On the numbers, last year the Mets’ attendance was about 1mm below full capacity. If Soto fills half of those seats at $50 a pop, that covers half of his salary. Then maybe raise ticket prices by $5 per seat for the 2.4mm seats you already sell, and that’s another $12mm. The TV contract is now $88mm, so maybe you can get some from that, upon renewal. Add in some merchandise sales, subtract the salary of whoever Soto replaced, and maybe you can get somewhere close to Soto’s new salary. Of course, there are tons of unknowns over such a long contract. He could fizzle out.
The gift of Bernie Madoff.
This puts it in stark contrast.
Football is a global sport. Kids in poverty kick a homemade ball around yelling his name. Football global viewership is several orders of magnitude greater. Baseball is… well a quaint American sport outside of the Americas, Taiwan and Japan…
South Korea, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama, Mexico, Venezuela, Canada
Except for South Korea, think I got the others as part of the Americas…
Surprised the Canucks play baseball. I just figured it was hockey all year round…
I’ll admit I don’t follow baseball but do people have 15 year careers in this sport? If so, do they have them after the age of 26?
It’s an insane amount of money to pay someone for such an extended period of time especially if you’re aware that careers don’t hold up to this amount of play.
It’s the 51st state, hence Canada’s national pastime.
The Blue Jays GM said yesterday that they were “grateful to be part of the process” in the Juan Soto sweepstakes.
Ugh, so cringe. This organization is pathetic. And next off season we’re going to lose Vladdy Jr and Bo Bichette.
Does it put it in stark contrast?
Soccer isn’t as popular in the baseball hotbed countries like the US, Japan, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, or Cuba. So in turn baseball can command ridiculous salaries as to market to the populace in those countries. Juan Soto isn’t being paid $800 million to gain attention in Brazil, France, Ireland, or Russia. Shohei Ohtani isn’t getting paid $75 million per year to please the UK, German, and Portuguese audiences.
Great players often have at least 15 good years. But, having 15 good years from age 26 onward is highly unlikely. Maybe 12 good years, which gets him to age 38, if all goes well.
No, they know they aren’t getting 15 years. If they get 8-10 they will be happy. More a way to defer money than anything else. And if he retires instead of sloggin through it like Pujols you can negotiate a buyout. But you can always have a Pujols collecting checks and clogging up your lineup with a negative WAR for several years.
Apparently, not one cent of Soto’s contract is deferred.
Right, but they pay him for 15 years expecting to get 8 - 10. So instead of $76M/year for 10 years they are paying him only $50M for 15. It’s baseball math, makes it almost free.
A lot of the time it is the total number they work on and then add years to get it to work. The chances of him being productive in his 36 - 41 years old age is not great.
As if the money wasn’t insane enough on its own.
Yankees’ refusal to give Juan Soto a suite may have pushed him to Mets