How MLB’s Next CBA Could Reshape the Future for the Minnesota Twins

[NYCTK]

I really can't pretend to care to implement more socialist safety nets for the blood sucking billionaires until we have socialized healthcare at a bare minimum. 

I am and will always be pro union so I want to see MLBPA get whatever they want. 

[bean5302]

1 hour ago, TJSweens said:

Keep the context at a high enough level and it almost looks in balance. How many of those 22 teams had meaningful playoff appearances and how many nabbed last spots and were out right away? Are you really going to point a 3 year sample as your big aha?

No. You tell me. I provided plenty of strong evidence (playoff apperance rate, championship appearance rate, World Series appearance rate) which shows baseball is extremely competitive.

Then you ask for more evidence, which is just internet code for you don't have any credible evidence to provide in support of your position, but you're unwilling to accept any debate in regard to the validity of your unfounded opinion.

[Major League Ready]

2 hours ago, old nurse said:

Revenue sharing will be a difficult thing to change. For the high value teams it is the revenue or the potential for revenue that drives the price up. There was an article behind a paywall that said in the headline that the Dodgers generated over 1 billion in revenue after revenue sharing, the tram revenue was somewhere around 780 million. Increasing the revenue sharing  decreases the value of the clubs. The teams at the top of the revenue sharing are going tp want something in return for changing the system. 

I keep asking myself how that could possibly work.  Why would the top teams agree to be devalued by a billion dollars?  There has to be an agreement in place, right.  According to Chat GPT, there is an agreement that prevents teams from voting to take revenue from high revenue teams.  Of course, it's in their best interest to maintain national interest in the game/league but I can't imagine them agreeing to concede enough to make a difference.  

Then, I ask myself what would be the impact of a floor.  If you're a fan of a modest revenue team, they will need to go through rebuild cycles.  The best amongst these teams still goes through cycles where they are not competitive.  Would we want over-priced mediocre veterans taking roster spots from players that could be part of the solution.  There are a handful of people that would be OK with this but not the fans that want to see the organization build a true contender. 

 

[sweetmusicviola16]

Who wants their wages capped? I don't want mine to be.

 

Broadcast revenue does need to be evenly split among all teams. The books of all of the teams need to be more honest too. I know, right. The rich owners need to tell the ones crying super poor to spend the money they give them.

As far as the players go, more money and a better living to those who are toiling in the minors. Much more. If you're a guy making 15mil a season you would have never gotten it were it not for the guys in AA etc who never made it to ML but gave you someone to play against and prove yourself. 

[Pat]

As a former union negotiator, I can tell you  that the number one rule in contract negotiations is never go backwards.  The players will go to the mat on the salary cap issue. Why would they agree on a potential limit to their earning power?  Not going to happen. I would also point out that spending insane amounts of money is no guarantee of success.  Well run teams will succeed regardless of payroll issues and poorly run teams will fail even if they have deep pockets. 

[TNtwins85]

3 hours ago, NYCTK said:

I really can't pretend to care to implement more socialist safety nets for the blood sucking billionaires until we have socialized healthcare at a bare minimum. 

I am and will always be pro union so I want to see MLBPA get whatever they want. 

If I had a gun to my head and had to pick one I’d pick a floor for sure. But one doesn’t come without the other it seems. As so is the narrative I guess since a cap/floor is the ONLY way to fix something that doesn’t seem as broken as most make it out to be. Again as is life a few people/teams ruin it for everyone. 

[TNtwins85]

44 minutes ago, Pat said:

As a former union negotiator, I can tell you  that the number one rule in contract negotiations is never go backwards.  The players will go to the mat on the salary cap issue. Why would they agree on a potential limit to their earning power?  Not going to happen. I would also point out that spending insane amounts of money is no guarantee of success.  Well run teams will succeed regardless of payroll issues and poorly run teams will fail even if they have deep pockets. 

Yes!!!! Very interesting you were a union negotiator! Everyone seems to think a said system will fix it for the Twins without thinking 1. Now they are truly competing against 29 other teams. 2. Someone still has to be last. And 2a. A badly run organization could still be mired in decades of irrelevance without a true bonafide way to get out. Exhibit A: go ask the Lions until recently, the Browns and the Arizona Cardinals. Exhibit B: LA clippers, and the yes, the Minnesota Timberwolves until recently. There will still be badly run teams and to think the Twins benefit from said new system may be a dream. It’s gotten me plenty of thumbs down today only because I believe reality hit these people that a new system might be worse for the Twins. Lol

[JD-TWINS]

8 hours ago, DJL44 said:

They already share a baseline 48% of revenue but it's all put into a pool and divided out evenly. There needs to be incentives for attendance. I think they need to share all of the money from media 100%, just like they would if they had a national contract like the NFL. Let the league sell media rights. In exchange for that, remove the revenue sharing for the in-person attendance. Large market teams will still do better than small market teams (it's actually a bad idea for MLB to minimize revenue in large markets) but teams who sell out the stadium will do best of all.

Attendance is driven mostly (but not entirely) by winning. To win you need to either run your organization well or spend a ton of money. 

Major League Baseball Finances: What the Numbers Tell Us | Elliot Morss

According to that source, teams make $4.3B in TV money and $2.3B in attendance money. Other sources have total revenue at $12B for the whole league. There is $2B in leaguewide sponsorship money. 

MLB Revenues Hit Record $12.1 Billion In 2024

There is a $90M gap between the Twins TV revenue sharing money and the Dodgers. There is only a $60M gap between their attendance revenue. The Twins can't put themselves in a bigger market to get a better TV deal, but they can figure out how to get people to attend games.

Top teams by TV revenue

Dodgers

Angels

Yankees

Red Sox

Mariners (but Root Sports just ended which will move them back to the pack)

Cubs

Top teams by attendance revenue

Dodgers

Cardinals

Yankees

Cubs

Angels

Rockies

Net winners of changing to sharing 100% of TV money and 0% of attendance money

Cardinals +30M

Rockies +28M

Brewers +25M

Braves +15M

Padres +10M

Twins +9M

Net losers

Dodgers -51M

Angels -22M

Mariners -20M

Tigers -14M

Orioles -12M

White Sox -9M

The Dodgers are still #1 in revenue and Marlins are #30 but the gap shrinks by $50M.

My point is that more spending on players to attract more fans, via being competitive with a better roster, is a $$$$ wash or very near to being a wash. Spend $50M to be competitive and draw 600,000 more patrons and the difference in dollars in and dollars out is meager.

[DJL44]

52 minutes ago, JD-TWINS said:

My point is that more spending on players to attract more fans, via being competitive with a better roster, is a $$$$ wash or very near to being a wash. Spend $50M to be competitive and draw 600,000 more patrons and the difference in dollars in and dollars out is meager.

Not if you make the playoffs 

[bean5302]

1 hour ago, JD-TWINS said:

My point is that more spending on players to attract more fans, via being competitive with a better roster, is a $$$$ wash or very near to being a wash. Spend $50M to be competitive and draw 600,000 more patrons and the difference in dollars in and dollars out is meager.

Fans don't care about the names on jerseys in general. Attendance went up after Joe Mauer retired. Attendance went up after Johan Santana left. Attendance went up after Kirby Puckett retired.

Outside of some extremely rare cases (Ohtani), fans do not pay money to see players. Fans pay money for the game day experience. The players do not matter to baseball. Sure wins and losses matter, but they also don't matter nearly as much as just having a fun atmosphere.

Attendance is a chicken vs egg thing. High attendance makes the event more exciting which in turn makes it more attractive to ticket buyers. Fun ambiance, big crowds, good giveaways, those are what bring fans to the game.

[dxpavelka]

On 11/29/2025 at 7:10 AM, CRF said:

MLB desperately needs a salary cap more than anything else, but it'll be next to impossible to get there. There's going to be a very long lockout/strike after next season. The game may never recover from it. 

And, sadly, MLB doesn't have the one thing the NFL always has when they boat race their players in CBA negotiations.  "Hey, give us what we want and we'll let you smoke more weed."  Or do they?

[Major League Ready]

On 11/29/2025 at 7:04 PM, JD-TWINS said:

My point is that more spending on players to attract more fans, via being competitive with a better roster, is a $$$$ wash or very near to being a wash. Spend $50M to be competitive and draw 600,000 more patrons and the difference in dollars in and dollars out is meager.

I see this claim often but it's always a generalized statement that the revenue would offset the expenditure with no supporting math.  The glaring problem with your math is that 48% of the increased revenue goes to the visiting team.  Your assumed benefit is off my half to begin with.    

Then, you have the assumption of a 600K increase.  When have the Twins every had a 600K increase in attendance?  Never and it’s not close.  They had a 500K increase after covid which is an extreme anomaly that is irrelevant.  The increases in attendance for the 101 win team in 2019 was 344,000.     

Let's use a semi-reasonable assumption for attendance.  If everything goes extremely well and attendance is increased by 400K (which is still extremely optimistic) at an average of $75 spend per fan.  The revenue gain is 400,000 * 75 * .52 = $15.6M of gross revenue.  Half of that revenue is concessions.  I know what their arrangement is with vendors.  If we assume a 50/50 split with the vendors absorbing all of the cost of product and personnel, the concession revenue on increased attendance is about $4M.  Therefore, the total increase in revenue is about $12M.  In estimating the ROI, you would multiply the $12M by the probability of success.  If we think the odds of success are 2:1 in favor, the expected revenue is $8M.   (12 X .666)

If someone knows how the concession revenue works, please jump in.
 

[DJL44]

2 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

The glaring problem with your math is that 48% of the increased revenue goes to the visiting team.  Your assumed benefit is off my half to begin with.    

That's the problem I'm trying to address with changing the revenue sharing incentives. Marginal revenue is shared but marginal expenses (paying ushers, cleaning the bathrooms, etc) are taken on entirely by the home team. That means it isn't profitable for the Twins to sell the cheap seats for less than what they cost now. The Saints can sell a seat for $8 but the Twins have to sell it for $15 to make the same profit.

I would like MLB to try to maximize attendance with their revenue sharing incentives. It is a win for the fans, the players and the owners.

[Trov]

A cap helps provide parity and balance.  A floor helps make spending on vets and middle of the road players, it may hurt some of the stars a little.  If there is a cap and floor it will require a reworking of the whole pre-free agent timelines as well.  

The players do not want a cap because they do not want to cap what they can make, and they do not trust the owners on opening the books on what revenue looks like.  Plus, the players have long argued the non-baseball revenue that is generated by owners for owning real estate around the stadiums that has value due to the teams being there.  

Regardless, the players should see that a cap and floor systems is not only better for the game, but better for the average player and vets.  The biggest issue the players have had over the last decade or so is the 30 something vets not getting jobs or getting the contracts they were getting late 90's early 2000's. This is because the way free agency works in baseball now, the owners/GM's learned it makes more sense to not call up a guy until he is 24 or 25, unless a mega start in making, and use them up cheap in peak years, then let walk where their output is not much better if better then a new 24 or 25 year old. 

How would a cap/floor system help the game, and the average vet player? First, lets say it is a cap similar to NBA, the soft cap with tax implications.  That would be something I would suggest for MLB.  It would give players staying with home grown teams incentive to stay as teams could go over the cap to keep their own players home. The stars will still get paid, but there will be less hoarding of star players on the few top paying teams, unless they home grew them, or traded for them prior. 

This would mean less likely mid-level or small market teams always losing top guys to bigger markets.  With the floor it would also stop teams from doing the full mass rebuild route and brining in league min guys that are not ready MLB just because they are cheap.  Normally when a team goes that route they are not calling up true future prospects either to waste service time, but they are rolling out mid-level guys. 

More vets would be retained to fill out rosters.  Assuming an overhaul off the pre free agent rules there would be less service time manipulation too. The downfall to the players are less long term deals of like 10 years or more.  The reason is one most likely CBA would block it but even if not, teams will not want to risk getting stuck in cap problems with an aging player that is not producing.  Right now, the big market teams know they will be paying a player for bad production, but they are okay with the cost of that. Mid and small markets cannot afford that.

Do I think it will happen, no.  That is because the players will not back down, and the owners will eventually say, well we are losing all this money having to pay employees(not the players) during a shut down, and just the cost of upkeep for the ball parks and taking in no money.  So they will cave eventually.  The players will complain about how the teams could  be paying the players more but choosing not too, and the owners will complain they do not bring in enough money, while the big markets continue to out bid every small to mid market team for players and continue to march into playoffs.

[NYCTK]

On 12/2/2025 at 12:59 PM, Trov said:

Regardless, the players should see that a cap and floor systems is not only better for the game, but better for the average player and vets. 

No offense, but this sounds like the same BS that rich people use to explain why we can't raise their taxes or wages. 

There's no evidence that a salary cap would help the Twins compete. There's no evidence that a salary cap helps increase parity at all. There's theory, but then we look at the NFL and see that the theory is only theory. 

If owners in lesser markets want to increase parity it's all about revenue sharing and nothing to do with decreasing earning power of players. 

[TopGunn#22]

I think you make good points Trov.  From a "fan perspective" the biggest thing that needs to be "fixed" by baseball owners and players is a way for small/mid-market teams to keep a STAR.  

Exhibit A:  Tarik Skubal and in the near future, Paul Skenes and Bobby Witt Jr.  

Under the present system and business model, the Tigers really should trade Skubal THIS off season, before he becomes a FA in 2027.  The expected outcome is that the usual suspects, Dodgers, Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox, Cubs...will eventually be bidding for Skubal.  The Tigers realistically cannot compete with those teams from a purely financial standpoint.  It would be extremely detrimental for the Tigers to lose Skubal and get nothing back in return.  As a Twins fan, I should be happy the rival Tigers and Royals could get clobbered by this.  Instead, I hate it.  

Is there anybody on TD who thinks the Pirates have a snowballs chance in Hell to retain Paul Skenes when he's ready to hit free agency.  Or Bobby Witt Jr. with the Royals? Skubal is first in line this winter.

Major League Baseball has always had a "rich team takes advantage of poor team" dynamic.  The Yankees used the Kansas City Athletics as a mini farm team for years (hello Roger Maris).  The advent of Free Agency is what ultimately broke up Charlie Finley's Oakland Athletics dynasty. 

Any "negotiation" breaks down when one side or the other decrees something is "non-negotiable."  Pro Union guys have never run their own business.  They say Rule #1 is never give a penny back, won through negotiation.  But when market forces bring a business to it's knees, you see automobile manufacturing plants and jobs flee American cities, destroying jobs that should never have gone to foreign countries.  A hardline stance is what ended a good paying job with good benefits.  That's a shame.

Baseball players are not assembly line workers.  You can't just say "I'm moving my team to El Salvador" when you're a baseball owner.  I can see this being a bitter, long, drawn out conflict that might make the recent government shut down look like a game of checkers.  Both baseball owners and the players association have proven to be stubborn in the past.  Baseball needs a modern business model for modern times.  They also need people negotiating a deal where each side GIVES.  

  

[NYCTK]

50 minutes ago, TopGunn#22 said:

The Tigers realistically cannot choose not to compete with those teams from a purely financial standpoint.

 

 

[NYCTK]

1 hour ago, TopGunn#22 said:

Pro Union guys have never run their own business. 

Anyone that is anti-union is anti-labor. We've seen the degradation of the middle class with the elimination of unions. The average age of a home buyer is now 59 years old because business owners are incentivized to exploit their employees and now they aren't paid a livable wage. 

 

1 hour ago, TopGunn#22 said:

But when market forces bring a business to it's knees, you see automobile manufacturing plants and jobs flee American cities, destroying jobs that should never have gone to foreign countries. A hardline stance is what ended a good paying job with good benefits.  That's a shame.

If you can't pay a livable wage as an employer, your business sucks and it shouldn't exist. If your employee, after 5 years of full-time employment, can't purchase a house, you are exploiting that employee.

The fault in this exodus of jobs is not on the unions. It's squarely on the greedy executives and the politicians that incentivized this sort of activity, a rare occurrence where both sides are at fault, if not in equal measures. Blaming the people asking for better working conditions is beyond ridiculous. 

Just because their job is more lucrative, doesn't mean their union is any less worth fighting for. Anyone asking for a salary cap is Anti-Worker. Period. 

 

[TopGunn#22]

NYCTK, the people that can't afford a house are the college grads that are in debt up to their eyeballs and have a degree that isn't conducive to getting a job that would pay them a decent wage. The factual average age for a first time home buyer is 40.  For a repeat buyer it's 56.  (according to the National Association of Realtors).  

You and I will simply be on opposite sides of this argument.  I'm more pro management (in the baseball sense, pro-owner) because my background is in sales management.  You are more pro-union.  It doesn't make either of us 100% right or 100% wrong.  We just have different perspectives.

But you're being disingenuous if you're trying to frame it that the Tigers "CHOOSE NOT" to compete with the Dodgers from a financial standpoint.  The Pistons, Lions and Red Wings CAN compete with the Lakers, Rams and Kings in their sports because each of those leagues HAS a salary cap of some sort. 

The average payroll in MLB in 2024 was $151 million dollars.  The Dodgers-$310 million+  Mets-$333 million+ and Yankees $310 million+ were the highest.  The Athletics were lowest at $64 million.  The Tigers in 2024 spent in the $106-$110 million range.  Their 2025 payroll is projected to be $146 million to begin with and with luxury taxes factored in finish at about $181 million.  That's quite an increase year to year.  And that doesn't factor in trying to fit a $50 million dollar annual salary for Tarik Skubal.

The resources that the Dodgers, Mets and Yankees (along with a couple other teams) HAVE, just don't exist for a team like the Tigers (or the Pirates and Royals for that matter) under the present MLB business model. Sure, those teams could throw hundreds of millions of dollars at their star player, but they'd cripple their team's ability to put any kind of team around those stars and someday, Skenes would like to pitch in a World Series. 

The last time the Pirates played in a World Series was 1979.  They won it.  How old were you then??  

As I said, you and I can respectfully disagree on pro union, pro worker, pro management, pro "whatever" philosophy.  I'm fine with that.  But you cannot simply dismiss the current economic landscape of Major League Baseball by claiming the Pittsburg Pirates are on the same economic footing as the Los Angeles Dodgers, but they "choose not" to compete with them.  

 

[DJL44]

5 minutes ago, TopGunn#22 said:

The Pistons, Lions and Red Wings CAN compete with the Lakers, Rams and Kings in their sports because each of those leagues HAS a salary cap of some sort. 

The resources that the Dodgers, Mets and Yankees (along with a couple other teams) HAVE, just don't exist for a team like the Tigers (or the Pirates and Royals for that matter) under the present MLB business model.

It's the revenue sharing, not the salary cap. Adding a salary cap doesn't give the Tigers any additional resources. MLB already has a soft cap in the luxury tax system that forces more revenue sharing dollars to the smaller market teams. Take that away and they'll have even LESS revenue.

OTOH - if they get the incentives right for revenue sharing, they don't need a salary cap at all.

[TopGunn#22]

DJL44, thanks for making that distinction, I didn't do a good job of that, but you cleaned it up.  It's not a salary cap that's needed. It's a better form of revenue sharing.  

[tony&rodney]

For those seriously interested in understanding more about MLB' revenues ...

https://brewerfanatic.com/forums/topic/46352-mlbs-revenue-sharing-model-has-two-big-problems-how-can-they-be-fixed/#comment-1714609

McKibbin had another article last January. 

In consideration of the fact that MLB clubs do NOT have open books, which other sports do have, I find it hard to see this as anything but a conversation between owners on how they want to distribute the money. As such the players are a minor player in the room. They get to listen.

I guess they could agree to go back to the 1960s. A side benefit to that is we could hire Brooks Lee to paint our garage for a little extra money. Pablo Lopez could spend four hours a day in the offseason shaking hands at a Toyota dealership. Yes, Twins players painted garages and shook hands at dealerships for money in the 1960s. I know of four specific incidents first hand.

I understand people feeling a floor and cap are possible but this is not really in the hands of the players. If the owners want to set up a system where the Dodgers $300M is the max/ cap and then have a $240M min/ floor (which is 80%) for teams, the MLBPA says "OK', Should the players buy into a lower percentage? 

How is MLB going to push the Dodgers/Yankees/Mets/Blue Jays payroll low enough so that Cleveland and West Sacramento can afford to pay 90%? 80%? 70%? 60%? 

I expect a settlement next January, 2027. Billionaires like making money.

[NYCTK]

1 hour ago, TopGunn#22 said:

NYCTK, the people that can't afford a house are the college grads that are in debt up to their eyeballs and have a degree that isn't conducive to getting a job that would pay them a decent wage. The factual average age for a first time home buyer is 40.  For a repeat buyer it's 56.  (according to the National Association of Realtors).  

Again, no offense. But you seem like someone completely out of touch with the real economy. You sound like you took Reagan era business classes and haven't looked at any data since. 

Sure. The average age of a first home buyer is 40...and that's terrible! And that's only the people actually buying. It should be about a decade earlier than that. 80% of home buyers are repeat buyers, be that upgrading assets or commodifying homes, leeches on society buying up homes to flip them for profit, exploiting their community. 

No one is buying homes because the middle class has been murdered by capitalism thanks, in part, to the destruction of labor unions. 

And it's just a fact that IF the Tigers don't pay Skubal it's because the Tigers billionaire owner has decided he doesn't care to pay him. Nothing else.

I don't care, and you shouldn't care, if the Tigers billionaire loses 2% of his net worth. His life wouldn't change at all. Let's stop pretending he's not a selfish, worthless leech on society. Much more so than any average person on food stamps or unemployment. 

Anyone calling for a salary cap should forfeit their salary to their employer out of solidarity. I truly can't understand the mentality of anyone siding with billionaires over normal dudes. Just because your baseball team sucks and you misguidedly think reducing wages will help them win a few games? Come on. 

[TopGunn#22]

Yes, I am of an age to have graduated college right around the time Ronald Reagan took office.  This isn't so much a disagreement about how "baseball economics" should be as much as a philosophical political discussion of capitalism vs. communism.  I will say that it's fascinating to see how the current democratic party, which has embraced the communist model, has completely lost the middle class, which the Republican party now owns.

So it's safe to say you and I will never be on the same page.  

This is not the forum to debate the pros or cons of either system so I will respect the general tenor of TD by refraining to comment further.  I am a retired middle class guy who's 3 children, middle class as well, all own their own homes and are realizing the American Dream as their families grow.  Communism would cap their earning potential, which I don't want and they don't want.  It would also severely limit their freedom.  From America's inception, we were based on Judeo-Christian principles and free market capitalism.  It's the best system the world has ever employed.  

[tony&rodney]

12 minutes ago, TopGunn#22 said:

Yes, I am of an age to have graduated college right around the time Ronald Reagan took office.  This isn't so much a disagreement about how "baseball economics" should be as much as a philosophical political discussion of capitalism vs. communism.  I will say that it's fascinating to see how the current democratic party, which has embraced the communist model, has completely lost the middle class, which the Republican party now owns.

So it's safe to say you and I will never be on the same page.  

This is not the forum to debate the pros or cons of either system so I will respect the general tenor of TD by refraining to comment further.  I am a retired middle class guy who's 3 children, middle class as well, all own their own homes and are realizing the American Dream as their families grow.  Communism would cap their earning potential, which I don't want and they don't want.  It would also severely limit their freedom.  From America's inception, we were based on Judeo-Christian principles and free market capitalism.  It's the best system the world has ever employed.  

Have you lived in a communist country? I have. The government is communist, the economy is nearly pure capitalism, much much more than than the U.S.  China has half the number of billionaires as the U.S. and they just got started. There is a thriving middle class but competition is really tough. The U.S. has a socialist economy and and an oligarchic government. You get to vote for whomever the oligarchs say is one of your choices at the national level. The last person to run for president as a communist was in 1984, Angela Davis. The last time a person received a significant vote as a socialist was in 1912 and that guy, Eugene Debs, was thrown in jail for suggesting WW1 was a bad idea, which it was. The largest amount of socialist dollars go to corporations. I am an old man and also a retired middle class person. I worked for more than 50 years.  My kids are all doing well, own homes, and are enjoying life. It really helps to be born into a good situation. Nobody chooses their parents or place of birth. The human condition, wants and needs are universal. The number of wealthy individuals who inherited their money is staggering. The Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins and New York Yankees are all clubs owned by people who inherited their wealth and team. 

I do think that ownership and players should work together to create a workable system for all but it seems ludicrous to believe ownership has anything but dollars in mind. There will be a new CBA in January of 2027.

[The Great Hambino]

4 hours ago, TopGunn#22 said:

DJL44, thanks for making that distinction, I didn't do a good job of that, but you cleaned it up.  It's not a salary cap that's needed. It's a better form of revenue sharing.  

An increase in revenue sharing with no real mechanism to force teams to put that into payroll does nothing for the players.  In fact, since you're taking funds away from teams willing to spend it and giving it to teams not willing to spend it, you're actually suppressing salary overall.  The players fought against increased revenue sharing in the last CBA negotiations because they rightfully don't trust the Nuttings and Fishers of the world to meaningfully spend and not just pocket those funds.  And whatever weak requirements that exist currently to force teams to spend those funds clearly aren't working, since the Pirates are able to turn a profit operating the way they do.  Giving them even more money to pocket is not a solution, and trying to shame them into spending it by calling them evil on an online message board isn't going to get them to spend it either.

I don't think either revenue sharing or a salary cap on their own solve anything.  Similar to revenue sharing with no enforcement mechanism, a cap with no offsetting upward push on payroll levels of teams at the bottom also has the net effect of suppressing player salaries. They need to work in tandem (along with a high floor, which I don't understand why it keeps getting ignored in these discussions) to level the playing field without taking money out of player pockets and putting it into owner pockets.  The way I see it, increased revenue sharing is toothless without a meaningful floor or some similar mechanism (loss of draft picks, loss of future revenue sharing, etc).   Now getting that floor or floor-like mechanism in place in collective bargaining would be a huge concession from the owners that would require a similar major concession from players.  I don't know what that would be other than a cap. 

Because this is all subject to negotiation, which is ultimately about compromise, I think an NBA-style soft cap is much more likely than an NFL-style hard cap.  In a lot of ways, a soft cap is basically a luxury tax with actual enforcement mechanisms at both ends of the spectrum.  It's also worth noting that in the NBA, there's currently more parity than there's ever been in the sport (7 champs in 7 years including Milwaukee, OKC, and Denver but not New York or Chicago in the easiest sport for the best player to take over a game), player salaries are higher than they've ever been in the sport, franchise valuations are exploding (the T-Wolves sale ish-show came about because of this, also because Glen Taylor is a total knob), and there's a potentially budding dynasty located in one of their smallest markets.

[TopGunn#22]

Good points Hambino. I don't know what the best solution would be?  Does the NBA employ a salary floor?  

[DJL44]

4 hours ago, TopGunn#22 said:

the current democratic party, which has embraced the communist model,

The current Democrats are a bunch of Rockefeller Republicans. There aren't ANY communists in American politics. Bernie Sanders is a social democrat, which is a centrist in Europe.

[DJL44]

1 hour ago, The Great Hambino said:

An increase in revenue sharing with no real mechanism to force teams to put that into payroll does nothing for the players.

Correct, incentives matter. 100% of locally generated revenue should to the team. If you don't want to spend, nobody will attend your games, use your parking lot or buy your concessions and you'll make less money. TV money doesn't ebb and flow with team success but attendance revenue correlates very well with trying to win. The only teams that draw well without winning are the Rockies and the Cubs and that's because it's a huge beer blast with a baseball game attached.

[The Great Hambino]

15 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

Correct, incentives matter. 100% of locally generated revenue should to the team. If you don't want to spend, nobody will attend your games, use your parking lot or buy your concessions and you'll make less money. TV money doesn't ebb and flow with team success but attendance revenue correlates very well with trying to win. The only teams that draw well without winning are the Rockies and the Cubs and that's because it's a huge beer blast with a baseball game attached.

Depending on what you're defining as locally-generated revenue, that would potentially decrease revenue sharing, not increase it.  And even if you're limiting it to gameday revenues (tickets, concessions, parking), the cheapskate owners would just drop payroll even further and maintain their profits that way.  There's a baseline for how low that can go with baseball die-hards, visiting team fans, and folks that just want to spend a nice summer evening at PNC Park.  They will drive payrolls down as low as they are allowed as long as they get their cut of national broadcast, merchandise, and sponsorship revenues.  There must be a mechanism that explicitly forces them to spend for increased revenue sharing to have a meaningful effect.  Hence the floor, hence the cap