Not any longer. Baseball will finish this year with just over $6 billion in revenue, according to Bob DuPuy, Major League Baseball’s president and chief operating officer.

To put that into context, that puts baseball right on the heels of the more than $6 billion in revenue reported by the National Football League in 2006.

Yes, baseball has a lot more games from which to generate sales than the NFL, but that has always been the case. Simply put, baseball has done a much better job in the past few years of boosting its revenue beyond traditional sources, i.e. ticket sales and television broadcasting.

Baseball’s sales have increased 50 percent from 2004 and have doubled since 2000. The NFL’s sales grew at roughly half of baseball’s pace during the same time period

The math is pretty straightforward Fellas: $6 billion divided by 30 teams = $200,000,000.00 per team. Don’t forget that CBA that went into effect in 2003 called for revenue sharing whereupon 20% of all 30 teams local revenues go into the “Central Fund”. (In the AL, about 80% of ticket sales go to the home team, and about 95% in the National League) The “Central Fund” is than redistributed proportionately and inversely along with all the League revenue that goes into the Central Fund ( tv rights, merchandise, cable network etc ad nauseum) with the lowest revenue teams collecting the most. Meaning, the teams with low payrolls beget low attendence beget low local revenues beget bigger revenue sharing checks.

Hence you have greedy cheapass fucks in Oakland, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Tampa, Miami, San Diego, Washington, Minnesota, Cincinnati, Cleveland who have virtually nobody on their rosters earning fair market value. Fairmarket equals anybody with more than 6 years of MLB service. Need I remind everybody that the average MLB contract is about 5.6 years?

Fuck Ron Manfred. He is the owners chief negotiator.

Simple math:

Giants attendance = 3 million 3 Million x 70 buckets = 210 million plus the comcast plus central fund money plus plus plus. These fuckers are taking in 300 million per year and they crybaby about expenses and how they can’t compete.

Like I said. Not “can’t compete”. But “Won’t compete.” Scrotum-scratching, ass-crack faced, butt-breathed, greedy welfare nipple-swingers built on the backs of fans and players.

Well, to be fair here, payroll doesn’t take into account operating expenses, or stadium payments, and whatever else. A lot of owners have to take on debt to buy a franchise so it’s understandable that they try to pay off that debt with their profit margin. That said, it’s still a legitimate question – a lot of these owners really do treat their franchise as a legitimate investment they’re expecting to get a good return from, and the Giants seem to be one of the ownership groups that’s very concerned about their ROI . Any time it’s treated as a business before a baseball team, the fans lose.

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2009/11/manfred_dispute.html

Manfred, however, indicated that Boras’s revenue sharing numbers were grossly out of whack and that the five largest recipients of revenue sharing are “25-35 percent” lower than the figure Boras referenced. Manfred also said there were only 10 teams with $200 million or more in revenues.

Interesting that Manfred says the five largest revenue sharers are getting roughly $50m-$60m in revenue sharing. That’s still enough money to cover the payroll for the 3 sub $60m payroll teams (Marlins, Padres, Pirates). Another 11 teams come in with a payroll under $80m and so I think its safe to assume that with ticket sales added on they have most of if not all their payroll covered.

Also ONLY 10 teams have $200m OR MORE in revenue so why is only one team spending even close to that in payroll (Yankees at ~$201m)?

George Genovese, the team’s 87-year-old scout, gets a 56% pay cut — to $8,000. Times are tough, the club says.

Can you believe this shit? Most of the time Plashke isn’t about journalism and is interested mainly in propagating stories, for the sake of sensationalist columns. Not to mention face time on ESPN, the pimp of choice for print journalists looking to sell their asses on the airwaves. But he does a good job at calling out the Dodgers, and in turn MLB Plantation owners in general with this excellent piece.

This is part of the MLB culture that is hidden from view and willfully ignored by the good folks at KNBR, The Chronicle, Comcast and all the other so called journalists telling us all what and how to think.

Front offices of Major league teams are run like medieval kingdoms. Everything is cool if you’re a duke, duchess, or an earl, but woe betide the serfs who harvest the crops. You are shit and if you do not grovel, you will get reduced rations or no rations at all.

There is more than oner reason that owners hate Scott Boras, and hated Marivin Miller and hate Donald Fehr. And it is witnessing a lifetime of shit like this that drives Boras and others to squeeze the living shit out of owners. To punish them. And then the owners punish back by doing things like this to the little people. Like in a all conflicts between 2 powerful entities. The innocent bystander just trying to earn enough to make it to the next day gets mauled.

They don’t do things like this because they need the money. They do things like this to folks like Geroge Genovese for one reason only.

Because they can.

If I’m a fan, I really have to question it and look at the history of my franchise and the others and evaluate what commitment each franchise is making.

“Some are doing a good job of it. Some are making decisions going forward, and there are others basically using our industry as a method for acquiring hundreds of millions of dollars in assets on the backs of the industry.’’

As for me, its been 51 years and counting.

As for me, its been 51 years and counting.

The Giants made more money than a lot of franchises. If they were dedicated to winning, they could easily up the payroll ~$40M+ and still have excess revenues to pay down their debt. The owners just wouldn’t fill their pockets as deeply.