Baseball Owners Are Using A Familiar Playbook To Blame Players If This Season Is Canceled

The campaign has started, and many fell for it in the past.

Similar to the playbook Major League Baseball owners used in 1994 – the infamous strike season – they are working early to paint the players as unwilling to compromise to bring baseball back for the fans. Owners will throw up their hands and say they did all they could to get the players back on the field.

It’s a public relations move that worked in the past. This time, though, as MLB and the Players Association work to save what is left of the 2020 season amid the coronavirus pandemic, fans are more educated about the game’s economics. Don’t be duped by smoke and mirrors.

On Sunday night, MLB Network insider Jon Heyman reported that owners will ask players to take a pay cut – more than the pro-rated salaries already agreed to – if a shortened season happens this year.

Owners are starting to cry poor expecting to see around $11 billion in expected revenue in 2020, 51% of which is said to come via stadium gates, according to David Lennon of Newsday. Fewer games mean less revenue, and because fans aren’t allowed in stadiums, revenue will take a significant hit. No doubt. 

So, owners want to give players revenue sharing rather than their pro-rated salaries. However, what those revenue sources are is a mystery to everyone, including players.

Players already agreed in March to pro-rated salaries in case of a shortened season. They also agreed to not be paid at all, beyond a shared sum of $170 million for all players, if the season is canceled. That is not greed. That was a good-faith negotiation, they thought.

Owners know the Players Association won’t agree to a revenue-sharing deal, especially if owners won’t share all revenue streams. That means this probably isn’t a good-faith negotiation now. Owners will say players aren’t being sympathetic to them losing money, nor to the fans who want the game to return.

The goal is to get fans to side with the billionaires by blaming the millionaires. It worked in 1994 as many fans believed the players were the greedy ones who kept the season from happening.

But owners won’t tell us about all their revenue sources. Things like media deals and real estate agreements aren’t fully disclosed to the Players Association, so agreeing to a new revenue-sharing agreement means players will do so blindly, or they can ask for the books to be opened up. 

Good luck getting the owners to do the latter.

In the coming days and weeks, fans are going to hear a lot about revenue sharing and potential salary caps and pro-rated salaries. If they look hard enough, they’ll also know about all the different revenue sources baseball profits from, and they’ll understand that those sources, still in line to bring in maybe $4-5 billion in profit this year if a season is played, are not shared with players. 

Access to information has changed dramatically in the last 25 or so years since the 1994 strike. But ownership’s goal has not – at least not nearly as drastically. The M.O. is still to make money, and share as little as possible with the labor force.

The fight between owners and players seems inevitable now as the 2020 season tries to get off the ground, and that bad blood could bleed into negotiations after the CBA expires in 2021. As you learn about all this, try not to fall for propaganda and try to understand the agendas on both sides.

It’s not as simple as owners want you to believe.

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