MLB's Revenue Issue: A Simple Fix

[NJOriolesFan]

I would change revenue sharing and luxury tax structure, as far as who gets the money. I would add one other wrinkle to free agency.

First the free agency wrinkle.

Each team would get one franchise player and two transition players. If they are signed away from them, they have the right to match. If they don't match, they will get compensation in the way of draft picks and/or compensation from the team that gets the free agent. A franchise player would be a draft pick and a player from an unprotected list from that franchise. I would think the unprotected list would be 17 players that are on the MLB 40 man roster and an additional 8 players either in the minors or on the 40 man roster. Everybody else in the organization is available as compensation. If a player has a no-trade clause he must be protected. The draft choice would be a first rounder and a supplemental pick. No other free agency compensation. No more A, B, C free agents. If a team doesn't have enough money to pay the guy then they would get the money from revenue sharing and luxury tax money.

On to revenue sharing and luxury tax. We are fans of the Orioles so we get the gap between the haves and the have nots. Why do the Royals need more money when they are competing against the White Sox, Indians, Tigers and Twins? They deserve some. They are playing for a wild card and compete against the big boys there. There should be a restructuring that determines the real threshold for most teams. $125 million is not a threshold for a luxury tax. It needs something with more meat. The formula would give back to the teams that are in the same division competing with those that are spending more.

If the Yankees and Red Sox had to give money to the Orioles and Blue Jays when they spend more money they might think twice. That money has to be used on player salaries or player development upgrades. Revenue sharing is the same.

Maybe the money given out would be 65% in division, 25% in the same league and 10% to all of baseball. The teams giving money, don't get money back.

I think division races would be closer and players would have more chance of staying long-term with franchises. I am sure this probably has some holes in it but do you guys think it is a good starting point?

[DrungoHazewood]

I don't see it happening any time soon. I remember about a decade ago when the next "big" thing was browsing the internet on your tv. I had a friend invest heavily in one company that was doing it and I told him then that people view the two activities as mutually exclusive. I still believe this is true.

It's already happening. MLBAM, the arm of major league baseball in charge of internet content and streaming games, is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, revenue growth areas in the sport. Places like YouTube and Hulu are huge growth sites. iTunes does big business selling TV shows online.

Of course most people weren't going to use their TVs, without keyboards, set up far across their living room, in what's often a shared family space, to surf text and photos and video online. Especially back when most TVs were analog tubes with much lower resolution than any computer monitor.

But using your computer (or iPad or cell phone or iPhone or netbook) to gather content and route it to whatever display you want? No brainer, especially with ever bigger broadband pipes both wired and wireless. It's huge and growing all the time.

[lordbrook]

It's already happening. MLBAM, the arm of major league baseball in charge of internet content and streaming games, is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, revenue growth areas in the sport. Places like YouTube and Hulu are huge growth sites. iTunes does big business selling TV shows online.

Of course most people weren't going to use their TVs, without keyboards, set up far across their living room, in what's often a shared family space, to surf text and photos and video online. Especially back when most TVs were analog tubes with much lower resolution than any computer monitor.

But using your computer (or iPad or cell phone or iPhone or netbook) to gather content and route it to whatever display you want? No brainer, especially with ever bigger broadband pipes both wired and wireless. It's huge and growing all the time.

I will grant you that it is growing, but IMO it won't replace tv broadcast anytime soon. My reasons are that while Hulu is incredibly popular, but it doesn't provide sporting events, or very few (I haven't been on there for a while). So with live sporting events you would have to stream them in a much higher resolution. While internet speeds are increasing, we are still a ways away from having the kinds of speeds that would be needed to stream HD sports to our tvs, and anyone that says we can just watch it on our computers has never watched sports on my 50" tv in HD. Whenever I have a choice I will choose my HD tv over my computer 100 times out of 100. Hulu and YouTube resolutions are far too small to translate to a tv, and I've done it so I should know. There is a program you can get to stream Hulu to your PS3 and it makes it watchable, but that is it. I wouldn't even consider it for sports. So in the world of sports, resolution is king. Until Google hooks us all up with fiber to our houses, broadcast will win over internet feeds. I would put the challenge to this entire board to come up with one single person that would choose watching a game on mlb.tv on my 22" monitor versus watching it on my 50" plasma, cost per game aside.

Another reason that ties in to the the first is that sports are more enjoyable (to most of us I presume) when we can share the experience. That's why we can get 50,000 people together to watch a game, have a bazillion bars designated as sports bars, and have huge tvs in our homes. I'm fine sitting on opposite sides of the couch with my friends watching a game, but if someone sidles up next to me to watch something on my computer monitor I get creeped out.

Anyway, I'm not providing any hard scientific evidence here; I'm just stating my opinion as I see it. Current broadband speeds are just not conducive to sports watching in the home.

P.S. I just read this post and it does make me wonder how it's possible to get HD cable into a house but I can't stream hulu to my tv without a few lags. I'm not a network guy so I don't know. Maybe this idea will be like VOIP was back in the day. It started out with crappy connections but now is becoming mainstream. I won't hold my breath.

[BaltimoreTerp]

The way this thread has turned, I'll just throw this in here instead of making a new thread: http://7is.neswblogs.com/2010/03/mlb-loves-to-hide-their-beautiful-game/

I have not liked MLB’s internet policies since the first time I tried to find an MLB highlight on the internet. It turns out the MLB destroys all content that gets posted on Youtube.

...

The NBA on the other hand, has a firm grasp on the internet, and it’s power. As soon as you want to see an NBA blooper, highlight, or fan video, you will find it on Youtube, all over the internet on message boards, on Digg, Ballhype, Blogs etc… But who put those videos everywhere? The fans did. The NBA saves millions of advertising doll hairs by having their game in everyone’s face, and they are paying zilch for it.

...

“MLB Advanced Media” is anything but “Advanced”. They are hiding their beautiful game in an age where everyone wants things now. No one wants to search high and low for it. MLB most likely makes a tiny bit of money from their website full of pop up ads and unembeddable clips. I guarantee you that the NBA makes tons more, and they are not forcing anyone to only watch clips on their site.