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You knew this to be true without the executive director of the MLB Players Association coming out and saying it, but just in case you needed the reassurance, here it is. Tony Clark has now said, out loud, that a salary cap “is not necessary,” despite MLB owners anonymously grumbling or outright saying the opposite to the press.
That’s per the Baltimore Banner, which has even more of a reason to cover this story than most, given Orioles’ owner David Rubenstein’s coming out in favor of a cap at the World Economic Forum in Davos, since MLB owners possess the kind of wealth that gets you interviewed while at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Here’s Clark:
“We remain of the mind, as we have over the last 50 or 60 years, that the industry does not need it,” Clark said. “It is not necessary. Whether it’s from a ‘competitive balance’ standpoint, or whether it’s from the ability of the industry to continue to grow and move forward, all of those things have happened in the absence of [a salary cap] and our game has thrived as a result.”
MLB continued to set revenue records year after year after year, for nearly two decades, with the stretch only being broken by the COVID-shortened 2020 season that also took gate revenue out of the equation. This was all during the luxury tax era, which, sure, hasn’t capped spending directly, but it’s served as a de facto cap. And done such a great job, that, honestly, I’m still not convinced that the owners actually want a salary cap, but that all of this saber rattling is a way to create some leverage for their real goal of making the luxury tax even more restrictive. As I wrote last month in this space:
Figuring out just what is “baseball revenue” for salary cap purposes, at a time when the league has teams building malls around stadiums then pocketing all of the profit from such an endeavor, which is also claimed as non-baseball real estate revenue, is going to be a real problem. The league has, for decades, avoided sharing the specifics of its financial details with even the union it has to negotiate with every five years at the bargaining table. A cap would mean they need to drop some of the subterfuge in order to figure out what goes into the revenue split that determines the cap and floor band, which… are they prepared to do that? Is that actually better than the de facto salary cap the luxury tax system provides, one in which they have plenty of cover to hide under and clubs like the Pirates don’t need to spend a minimum amount higher than their current payroll? More than two-thirds of owners would have to be really tired of the Dodgers in a way I’m not convinced they actually are.
A cap would be worse for the players than the current system, given it would create a salary band that keeps teams like the Dodgers and Mets from doing whatever they want and helping to raise the value of contracts across the league as a result, but it would also be worse for the owners in various ways, given everything in the above paragraph. Which made all of this a nonstarter even before Clark and the PA reminded everyone that’s the case, but still. It’s good to hear that hasn’t changed as we move into an era of possible broadcast turmoil that’ll make the pleas of the owners for something to change that much louder.
Which, in and of itself, is not a new strategy for them, either, as I covered way back in 2021 when the regional sports network issues first started to crop up as a concern for the owners:
The league managed to convince NBC and ABC to join a bidding war against CBS for the rights to broadcast nationally televised MLB games. Neither of ABC or NBC were happy with how much the previous deal had cost them. The thing is, though, that these contracts were also about prestige, and making sure your rivals did not have them. CBS had lost out on one major deal after another to their competitors—the most recent of those the 1992 Barcelona Olympics to NBC—and had money they had already hoped to have spent just burning a hole in their proverbial pocket. So, they ended up proposing a deal that NBC or ABC would never top: over $1 billion for just four years of national MLB games, a shorter contract for more total and annual money than the last one MLB had signed.
The point is that all of this panic that the TV money was going away, panic so severe it resulted in three years of collusion to keep free agent salaries down, ended up being for nothing. MLB figured out a way to keep things moving forward: by taking advantage of the relationships between network rivals in a way that would make the fallen ratings a secondary concern. RSNs might be struggling more than they were in 2010 when teams like the Rangers shocked everyone with 10-figure contracts for one team’s games, but MLB will find something new to replace that money, and more than likely, surpass it.
This is the reason why, even after a mutual opt-out by MLB and ESPN, their reunion in the future is still a possibility. If ESPN doesn’t have MLB games, someone else will. And while TBS or FOX or whomever isn’t going to topple ESPN’s position as the worldwide leader in sports, losing MLB in all forms for more than a couple of years would still leave a noticeable hole in their programming and coverage, especially given how they build everything around what they do broadcast. This is all being brought up just as a reminder that MLB has options, and they’ll find the money, because one network’s loss is another network’s gain, and they all know this is the case. And if the money is there, then there’s even less need for a salary cap. An impressive mathematical feat, given there already was zero need for one, but true all the same.
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