MLB Playoff Expansion

[tmwiese55]

All good post recently. Just adding that while the tax is helping in some fashion, as someone pointed out. It's still not the same as a real cap in a few ways. First, the obvious that you can just go over, and pay if you want (which leads to the point about whining about owners etc). But beyond that, it's set so high that it only matters to a few teams, which was part of the negotiation keeping it that high. It would need be set much lower to achieve the equivalent affect a real cap would.

 

The powers that be clearly see there is a problems for baseball going forward, thus all the changes they're implementing now. They need to sit down and hash this all out once and for all. They took an incremental step with the tax, now they need to go one or two steps further and get it all sorted out for the good of the game long term. Within this discussion should also be some tweaks to the service time stuff and paying young players (not holding them at cheap rates until they're 31 and past their prime) and minor leaguers more. That could be a tradeoff of some sort for the players agreeing to the cap. Along with all this should come revenue sharing and general opening of the books like other leagues have to do in order share this money. Heck, for all we know the cap could be much higher than we and I just guessed if NYY, Bos, CHC, and LA shared their money like in the other leagues. Maybe the end result would be that the players actually end up making money, but it's spread among all the teams in a better way.

[RollieTime]

I do think that if they reduce the years of control and/or have all players reach arbitration after 2 years instead of 3, MLB would need to do some type of revenue sharing to keep small market teams relevant. I do think that could also be a reason for the attendance dropping as fans know that their team won’t compete with the big boys and don’t want to waste their time and money on entertainment that people may feel puts their team at a disadvantage already.

 

If Manfred works toward removing the luxury tax or greatly increasing the tax line to something like $250 million without adding revenue sharing, then MLB will be digging their own grave. There would be absolutely no way for small market teams to be able to compete with less cheap control and more open spending for the big markets. The interesting part is, the players might find this type of thing appealing as it adds more money for the big market teams to spend AND the players get paid earlier in arbitration AND reach free agency earlier.

 

The most logical thing to do is revenue sharing and putting in a minimum payroll for teams like $100 million and have that number increase by $2 million each year. Then if they bump the luxury tax to $250 million or so, it would be manageable for a team like the Brewers who could year in and year out spend $150 million on payroll by receiving money through revenue sharing.

 

But we shall see.

[645]

MLB Attendance by Year:

2019 (68.5 million)

2018 (69.7)

2017 (72.7)

2016 (73.2)

2015 (73.7)

2014 (73.7)

2013 (74.0)

2012 (74.9)

2011 (73.4)

2010 (73.1)

2009 (73.4)

2008 (78.6)

2007 (79.5)

 

The average ticket price has risen from $22.77 (2007) to $32.99 (2019). It doesn't take a smart person to figure out the problem with MLB baseball. But yes, let's jack up the whole system to spark an interest.

 

Attendance for most major sports is dropping:

 

- From 2014 to ’18, attendance across the FBS (college fb) fell by 7.6%.

- Here’s how the NHL’s minus-1.32% decline from 2013-14 to 2018-19 compares to the other major sports leagues.

 

Major League Baseball (MLB): minus-5.88%

National Basketball Association (NBA): plus-2.59%

National Football League (NFL): minus-1.98%

Major League Soccer (MLS): plus-17.56%

Out of the five major sports leagues in the United States, three of the five, including the NHL, have posted declines in average attendance between 2013-14 to 2018-19. Two of the leagues posted growth, the NBA and MLS. If you’re wondering why the MLS percent change jumps off the charts it’s due to their success in expansion, Atlanta United has been able to consistently average 50,000 in attendance since its debut in 2017.

 

I think there are too many options to watch games at home.

 

You can argue that Cost is an issue and it might be as they try to get more or more out of the fans and on the other side you can argue there are too many options and that is also valid at how much each one of them are changing to get into the door.

 

I think it does play a bit of a roll but not as much as you think. The real issue of the drop in attendance goes to something that will be viewed totally off topic for it isn't even sports related and that would be Birth Rate. The number of kids born have drop every year for the past 19 Years. People die and they are not being replace as fast those days and a drop in attendance at a sporting event is clearly one of the impacts from it and the truth is that is an issue that is only coming into play now and unless people deside to start having more kids then it is a issue that is only going to get worse.

 

Anyway, I see allot of kids at the games and they do a really good job at getting them interested in the game and keep coming back. So I think drawing new fans really isn't an issue and the whole issue is there just isn't enough of them to get.