MLB Owners Could Care Less if Their Team Sucks

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It’s been a long time since I’ve typed up a baseball blog but I felt that this needed to come to your attention. Major League Baseball blows and we all know it. Not the sport, because baseball is as difficult as it gets. But the product out there is putrid. Which, in part, helped the Red Sox inflate their record this past season. Bad team after bad team, and bad owners not giving a damn is what will make the MLB see it’s demise. I came across an article by Yahoo! writer Craig Calcaterra who points out that this $10.2 Billion isn’t all shits and giggles. It could be the start of a downward trend for baseball. Give it a read, he exposes owners and how they make money of shit baseball.

Anyways, let’s take a dive into money making in the MLB, shall we?

First off, the MLB made a record breaking $10.2 billion this year (as reported by NBC Sports). And despite the shitty World Series ratings and lower attendance in new parks (I’m looking at you Miami), they made their money. So how can I be looking at the downside of this? Have I become a Debby Downer? No. I haven’t. I’m just a guy who sees things for what they are… oh shit I have become a downer…

Anyways, the MLB makes that money with a bit of the old-fashioned way, ticket sales, TV deals (we’ll get to that later) the MLB has several other contributing factors to making all that fucking cash:

• BAMTech (basically streaming games) which Disney has a 33% stake in and gives owners millions upon millions of dollars
• Partnering with Casinos to be gambling partners
• Getting paid millions to shove South Korean business Doosan down our throats during games
• Brand deals with major companies like Amazon, Coke, Arm & Hammer , etc..

Yes the cash is rolling in like a mother fucker. The problem? It’s not at the growing rate the MLB expects. The MLB somehow make $10 billion look gloomy.

In this dorks opinion, baseball has been surpassed by football and basketball here in the U.S.A.. There’s not a doubt in my mind that the sport is dying. It’s a sad reality in this day and age, and it’s not solely based on the players at all. It’s the greed from the bastards who run the teams/league. And as much as it pains me to say, it’s not because of the stupid traditionalists who continue to make baseball more stale than a piece of bread.

Part of the fucked up part about the MLB is that no matter how shitty your favorite team is, no matter how many loses they’ve had over the years, that owner is still benefiting from it all. As Jay Z put it best about the Brooklyn Nets, “Nets could go 0 for 82 and I’d look at you like this shit gravy.”

And the gravy is still coming for the owners, even if they didn’t have those brand deals in part because television networks for some reason think some teams will show you compelling baseball for the next decade or more when in reality, its never the case for about 95% of the teams. Billions of dollars go to these teams and they don’t blink twice when their team is shitty for a good 20 years.

The owners think they don’t need us fans. Attendance isn’t even impacting them down the line. You want to sit at home and watch the game? Great for them. More advertising on TV, more expensive seating when you do eventually go to the ballpark because they could give two shits about you coming to the game; it leads to most ballparks being ghost towns (Miami I’m looking at you). But when we all eventually get sick of the “experience” of watching the game from home or at the game, business partners will pull out and eventually pack up their shit and leave. Give me product I want to see. Don’t give me that Money Ball crap. Give me competition from years ago (just not the San Francisco Giants for the love of God). Give me a legit superstar, not these snowflakes who the average fan can’t even recognize out in public.

Ratings were down for the World Series this year, even in Boston. That’s also with the historic dominance of this years’ Red Sox team. Another crazy thing about that is ratings were down locally during the World Series. Maybe we’re sick and tired of the old ways of Baseball. This money isn’t going to last forever. Eventually the Korean company Doosan will pull away, eventually everything will be less popular and Baseball will have to do something about the shitty play. You’re losing fans, which means you’re eventually going to lose money and the sport won’t make the money it used to. Then what will those owners do? Take the money out of their pockets and they’ll start caring. Then we’ll see baseball at its best and teams trying instead of consistently bowing to other teams year after year.

Make Baseball what it used to be. America’s pastime.