Owners Bet Against Their Own Fans
Jerry Reinsdorf often gets called the owner who thinks he knows everything. But he is not the only one making bad calls in Major League Baseball. Owners from Anaheim to Queens are ignoring how to make real money. They care more about quick cash than the long-term health of the sport. This greed hurts the fans who buy tickets and watch the games.
The White Sox recently played a game on a pay streaming service called Peacock TV. This deal is part of a larger plan with NBC. According to South Side Sox, NBC pays $200 million or less per year for this three-year deal. That number covers Sunday Night Baseball and the wild-card playoffs too. It does not just cover one game on a Tuesday night.
The math shows owners are making a huge mistake. Apple TV already has Friday night games. Apple pays $55 million per year plus $30 million in ad buys. Yet, these broadcast rights bring in less than 1% of the total industry income. That is a tiny slice of a $12 billion business.
Streaming Deals Cut Off Millions
The problem is that these streaming services do not reach everyone. Peacock only has subscribers in about a third of TV households. Apple TV has even lower market penetration than Peacock does. By putting games behind paywalls, owners cut off millions of people. They are trying to kill the product they are supposed to protect.
Newspapers tried to save themselves by dumbing down content years ago. That strategy failed and hurt the industry. Now baseball owners are doing the exact same thing to the sport. They are sacrificing future growth for small gains today. This looks like suicide for a league that is actually having a nice resurgence.
The league has made smart moves to speed up the game recently. These changes have brought fans back to the parks. But the owners seem to want to push those fans away again. They are trading access for pennies on the dollar.
Greed Over Future Growth
Reinsdorf is 89 years old. He might not be around when the balloon bursts from these bad deals. But the other owners have no such excuse. They should know better than to ignore the future. Making money is the one thing billionaires are supposed to be good at. They are failing at that basic task.
The gambling tie-in income is huge for the league. Yet owners are ignoring the bigger picture. They focus on small contracts with tech giants. They forget that fans need to be able to watch the games. If fans cannot watch, the value of the league drops.
South Side Sox reports that the industry income is vast. The private ownership of most teams hides the real numbers. Only the Braves and Blue Jays show full income. This secrecy makes it hard to see the full cost of these deals. But the math is clear. The owners are giving away value for very little return.
The sport needs leaders who think about the next decade. Current owners are only thinking about the next quarter. This short-sightedness could hurt the game for a long time. Fans want to see their teams play on regular TV. They do not want to pay extra just to watch a game. The owners need to wake up before it is too late.
