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

[The Great Hambino]

48 minutes ago, TopGunn#22 said:

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

They have a high floor.  It's hard to say exactly what an accurate percentage would be since it takes a doctorate in economics and possibly quantum physics to understand the NBA's collective bargaining agreement with all its second aprons and mid-level trade exceptions, but from what I find online, the floor is 90% of the base cap

[DJL44]

6 minutes ago, The Great Hambino said:

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

Right now, the owners only get 52% of each local dollar spent and send the other 48% to the league. I'm proposing that all national revenue gets split evenly 30 ways (TV, radio, licensing, etc) and all gameday revenue gets kept locally. The overall percentage of shared revenue would be about the same as it is now but the incentive to put butts in seats would double overnight. Owners could cut ticket prices in half and make the same marginal revenue, or they could enhance the "gameday experience" (cheap beer?) or they could spend money to create a winning team. If overall baseball attendance goes up, that's a win. I don't really care about parity if MLB draws 7 million more fans to the ballpark (10% increase).

[TopGunn#22]

I think it does make more sense to split the national revenue, primarily media money evenly in 30 equal shares, and let the teams keep all their LOCAL revenue.  I'm not sure why that wasn't the business model from the beginning.  That "national" revenue is LEAGUE revenue.  What the Twins, Dodgers, Pirates, Yankees, Royals and Mets are able to generate LOCALLY should 100% be theirs.

So I agree with that idea DJL44, but Hambino makes a good point about certain teams that just don't spend.  I'm not saying the NBA is perfect because their system is REALLY complicated, but similar to "Bird Rights" I'd like to see teams that have stars like Skubal, Skenes and Bobby Witt Jr. have a fighting chance to retain their stars.

Hambino talks about the need to establish a "floor" and I think that's more important than imposing some kind of "cap."  We will never have to worry about the Twins exceeding any kind of cap.  But a floor of $120-$130 million would prevent teams like the Twins and others from choosing not to be competitive.  The Twins have a gaping hole at 1B.  I'm not saying this would make Pete Alonso a Twin.  But a trade for someone like Yandy Diaz would or could become more possible.  

The fact that a Minnesota team like the T-Wolves CAN exceed the regular cap and bump up against the 1st or even the 2nd apron shows that a team from Minnesota CAN spend at that level in some kind of different arrangement than MLB.  The fact that we as Twins fans have never seen the Twins even come close to a T-Wolves spend level in comparison is an MLB business model failing.  You can't just blame the Pohlad's because Glen Taylor was just as bad an owner as them.  

[DJL44]

1 hour ago, TopGunn#22 said:

I think it does make more sense to split the national revenue, primarily media money evenly in 30 equal shares, and let the teams keep all their LOCAL revenue.  I'm not sure why that wasn't the business model from the beginning.  That "national" revenue is LEAGUE revenue.  What the Twins, Dodgers, Pirates, Yankees, Royals and Mets are able to generate LOCALLY should 100% be theirs.

It goes back a long time. In the early years, it was agreed that the home team shares the gate with the visitors (otherwise they wouldn't travel to the game at all). The other part is me reclassifying "local" TV money as "national" which acknowledges that there is no "local" in media in a post-cable, streaming landscape.