How Will Television Uncertainties Affect 2024 Payroll?

The paragraph reminding us that 'not all of the tv money' is gone, should be reassuring. Any chance the team's success will yield equal or greater funding?

4 minutes ago, Patzky said:

The paragraph reminding us that 'not all of the tv money' is gone, should be reassuring. Any chance the team's success will yield equal or greater funding?

There is a chance, for a few reasons. The Twins had one of the least lucrative local TV contracts to begin with, so that helps minimize the downside. Also, the Twins only get half the local TV revenue and the rest is shared with the league which cuts the downside (and the upside) in half.

Diamond Sports was making more TV revenue than the contract cost them, just not enough to pay the debt service incurred when they spun off the company. A broadcast partner with less debt would still make money paying the Twins the same amount.

The Twins are going to look to increase their TV audience next season even if they have to take a short term revenue hit. An increase in the TV audience has benefits for attendance, merchandise sales and the value of advertising sold inside the stadium.

The Twins can afford to roster a payroll of $125 million next year. That should be sufficient to retain players needed to win the AL Central again next season. Additional money is always nice and a $155 million roster brings even more possibilities, but money shouldn't stop the Twins from having a very competitive team.

This potential drop in revenue should time out well with a Twins youth strategy.  Let some of the higher-cost players go and elevate up some of the promising but ready MiLB youth and we have this gap covered.

Adding the additional revenue from the patch and an uptick in fan interest/attendance will also help in that regard.

Please, NO TARGET on the sleeve for pitchers to aim at.  I vote for Medtronic, UHC or Mayo for our sponsor.

1 hour ago, tony&rodney said:

The Twins can afford to roster a payroll of $125 million next year. That should be sufficient to retain players needed to win the AL Central again next season. Additional money is always nice and a $155 million roster brings even more possibilities, but money shouldn't stop the Twins from having a very competitive team.

I hope the Twins don't impose financial austerity to bring the payroll down to $125M. That would be a drop to 20th in MLB. It would be unfortunate to see management starve a contending team of resources.

1 hour ago, JD-TWINS said:

Please go after Jordan Montgomery for $18M in year’s 1&2 …….. for $29M in year 3&4………total of $94M.

That would definitely not win the bidding.

21 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

I hope the Twins don't impose financial austerity to bring the payroll down to $125M. That would be a drop to 20th in MLB. It would be unfortunate to see management starve a contending team of resources.

Agree. I should have added that I don't really expect less than $150 million for reasons similar to chpettit19 as he stated above. I only wanted to state that the Twins should be good at a reduction too if that should somehow be necessary. Decisions about retention, who plays where, or trades are more the focus on improving the roster next year than building backwards with a budget.

All I can say is Thank God there are other options out there, however minimal, to raise revenue for the team.  I've been praying that the multi-billionaire Pohlads would not have to kick in maybe $25-$30m of their own money to help keep their team competitive.  Imagine how devastating it would be if the owners of an organization were actually expected to contribute some of their own plunders and were unable to find a way to pass these costs along to the taxpayers.  It would be the End Of All Things.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the Pohlads during this extremely trying time.

I absolutely Hate advertising logos on team jerseys. A disgrace, but in this day & age, it's all about follow the money.

Soccer teams are the worst. I can't  even tell who is playing because of all the logos.

That said, time to embrace the youth movement to meet the reduced payroll.

1st up, Austin Martin: he is spraying the ball all around  the diamond & has found his position in CF. Splits time with Buxton. He is ready. Worst case - Lewis backs up Buxton & Miranda, Farmer, Polanco play 3rd. Taylor = gone.

Kepler's $10M = gone. Love ya Max, but Wallner is the same player for $9M less.

Polanco & Farmer: would like to keep both, but with Julien and then Brooks Lee waiting in the wings, possibly Miranda, something may have to give.

Solano, an affordable,  versatile bat & player. Kiriloff health is one of our biggest x factors. Unfortunately there is no one else in the pipeline with the Justin Morneau like abilities that Kiriloff has. Lee & Julien are NOT the answer there, so Solano should stay.

The gaping hole in LF still needs to be addressed.  Make Severino a left fielder!

Better: acquire Juan Soto. Unlikely. Still wouldn't give up on Lanarch. Led the team in RBI for the first couple of months.

Pitching: make a splash and sign Yamamoto to an 8yr $160M deal.

Every other pitcher on the FA market is an older, injury risk and would cost the same. This is a make or break deal that could pay off immensely and be the start of a dynasty if successful. None of the leftys discussed on these pages make any sense compared to a Yamamoto signing.

LF, 1B, SP are the three keys to this team being great! If Kiriloff comes back healthy and has the kind of year we all know he can achieve, Martin does the same in CF, we can spend money on the LF, SP spots with the salary savings from losing Gray, Maeda, Mahle, Kepler & Polanco or Farmer.

Casto is a Swiss Army knife & should be locked up for sure.

Oh, and one last thing - a better bullpen arm than Pagan is a must. 

It shouldn’t be that hard to figure out how much the payroll could go down. Statistica placed the 2022 revenue at 267 million. Payroll was 135 million about 50% of revenue Forbes has placed revenue per fan at $50 per fan. Easy for them to compute when sales tax records are public. The attendance was up by almost 200,00 plus 4 playoff games.  That should push revenue up $10 million. But there is revenue sharing on the gate. Drops it in half. The contract was for 50 million. Half goes into the mlb pool of which the Twins get 1/30 back  no contract means a loss of 26 million. Net change 21 million down,, Payroll goes down 11 million because the Pohlads rounded up. No Joey Gallo replacement 

1 hour ago, old nurse said:

It shouldn’t be that hard to figure out how much the payroll could go down. Statistica placed the 2022 revenue at 267 million. Payroll was 135 million about 50% of revenue Forbes has placed revenue per fan at $50 per fan. Easy for them to compute when sales tax records are public. The attendance was up by almost 200,00 plus 4 playoff games.  That should push revenue up $10 million. But there is revenue sharing on the gate. Drops it in half. The contract was for 50 million. Half goes into the mlb pool of which the Twins get 1/30 back  no contract means a loss of 26 million. Net change 21 million down,, Payroll goes down 11 million because the Pohlads rounded up. No Joey Gallo replacement 

That's if the next TV contract pays $0 a year which is a ridiculous assumption.

If the contract drops in half (which is very pessimistic) then they're down $5-6M in payroll. That's a nothing burger.

1 hour ago, DJL44 said:

That's if the next TV contract pays $0 a year which is a ridiculous assumption.

If the contract drops in half (which is very pessimistic) then they're down $5-6M in payroll. That's a nothing burger.

The assumption is they are not planning on much because Bally is uncertain of going on, anything they start up is going to have expense. There are no other RSNs in this area 

1 hour ago, old nurse said:

The assumption is they are not planning on much because Bally is uncertain of going on, anything they start up is going to have expense. There are no other RSNs in this area 

Here's what I see as the worst case scenario:

Twins: "Hey Bally's, we know you barely made money at $55M last season. Would you pay $50M this year?"

Bally's: "Sure. We'll make $5M."

Better

Twins: "Hey Bally's, would you still pay us $30M to carry games even if we drop the streaming blackouts? You've also got to lower your cost to the cable companies so they all buy your channel."

Bally's: "Sure, we can make money at that level even if we aren't exclusive."

Best

Twins: "Hey Channel 45, would you carry our games? We'll produce the ads in-house and make all that money ourselves."

Channel 45: "Sure, we would love the increased audience going into our evening newscast."

On 11/1/2023 at 4:53 PM, DJL44 said:

Here's what I see as the worst case scenario:

Twins: "Hey Bally's, we know you barely made money at $55M last season. Would you pay $50M this year?"

Bally's: "Sure. We'll make $5M."

Better

Twins: "Hey Bally's, would you still pay us $30M to carry games even if we drop the streaming blackouts? You've also got to lower your cost to the cable companies so they all buy your channel."

Bally's: "Sure, we can make money at that level even if we aren't exclusive."

Best

Twins: "Hey Channel 45, would you carry our games? We'll produce the ads in-house and make all that money ourselves."

Channel 45: "Sure, we would love the increased audience going into our evening newscast."

So channel 45 would spend the money operating the television station, pre emptying their paid for programming  to broadcast twins games for no revenue,  I do not see a universe where that happens.

2 minutes between innings makes for just over 5100 in game commercials. The going rate for advertising  for a show that draws 200000 viewers isn’t that great 

3 hours ago, old nurse said:

The going rate for advertising  for a show that draws 200000 viewers isn’t that great 

MLB is often the highest rated show on summer evenings, even with the restrictions we see due to lack of access. Improving access will improve ratings. Sports also draws higher ad revenue because people are less likely to skip the ads. If the going ad rate for the Twins is bad then I don't know how the other shows on television make any money.

Interesting move by Sinclair to try to buy back Diamond Sports for pennies on the dollar. That's one way to finance a purchase - spin off the companies into a separate company, saddle them with the debt you used to finance the purchase, declare bankruptcy and buy back the rights for a fraction of the initial cost. The article also mentioned they want to cut their payments to the NBA by 20%.

Sinclair Broadcasting wants to scoop up Diamond Sports: sources (nypost.com)

Sinclair owns WUCW 23 in Minneapolis.