These new contracts are insane. What are these people thinking?? And now they expect us fans to pay for these overpaid players?

Posted by bjschumacher on 12/11/2019 11:32:00 PM (view original):
These new contracts are insane. What are these people thinking?? And now they expect us fans to pay for these overpaid players?

A 9 year contract for a 29 year old! Who pays someone to play baseball until they are 38?!?!?

They're just paying out money they've already banked from TV contracts and suppressing free agency the past five years. The way teams are run now gate receipts are maybe the smallest portion of the income.

I'd rather the players made it than the owners. Regardless, MLB's lack of a functional salary cap means big market teams will always have an indisputable advantage.

The Strasburg contract is the crazier one given that he's average but 26 starts a season for the past five seasons. But hey, I'm an Oakland fan/season-ticket holder - still one of the cheapest options in all professional sports.

Maybe I am alone here, but it seems that the older I get, the less interest I have in watching live sports.

However, I don't know exactly why. It is probably a combination of the below
1. Balancing a wife, career, kids and a mortgage;
2. I am a Minnesota fan where there are four major professional sports teams, but no title since 1991;
3. In today's world, you can get instant updates and highlights - why watch for three hours;
4. Just getting older and realizing that if the Vikings, Twins, Timberwolves and Wild win or lose, it doesn't really affect my life;
5. Marketing tries to convince us that we have a relationship with our sports team -- F*** Marketing!

Posted by tlowster on 12/18/2019 8:58:00 PM (view original):
Maybe I am alone here, but it seems that the older I get, the less interest I have in watching live sports.

However, I don't know exactly why. It is probably a combination of the below
1. Balancing a wife, career, kids and a mortgage;
2. I am a Minnesota fan where there are four major professional sports teams, but no title since 1991;
3. In today's world, you can get instant updates and highlights - why watch for three hours;
4. Just getting older and realizing that if the Vikings, Twins, Timberwolves and Wild win or lose, it doesn't really affect my life;
5. Marketing tries to convince us that we have a relationship with our sports team -- F*** Marketing!

I agree. I have a hard time watching a complete live game other than a good Iowa State game. I used to love to lay on the couch and watch a baseball game. No more. I can't fall asleep and take a nap like I used to, so I need to get up after a couple of innings and do something else. I am a Chiefs and Royals, Cubs and Bears fan, so I've been lucky in that the Royals and Cubs have won a WS in the past 5 years or so. And maybe the Chiefs can make it to the Super Bowl this year??? Maybe???

If you think the guy making 324 million for 9 years is making a lot of money....there is a guy signing the bottom of that check that can afford to pay him that money.

I believe it was Shaq that said "I'm rich, but Mr Buss is WEALTHY".

Did you go to a game this year? How much did you pay to go to that game? Did you go to a game 20 years ago? How much did you pay then? Who pays for these outrageous contracts?

How ******* stupid do you have to be to get annoyed at a player for earning money? You'd honestly rather that billionaire die with the money so his brat kids can inherit it. I can't even fathom.

https://mlb.nbcsports.com/2019/12/22/major-league-baseball-sets-new-revenue-record-10-7-billion/

"Forbes notes that ticket revenue is holding steady despite an attendance decline, which means that the league is simply extracting more dollars per fan than they used to. Meanwhile, current player payroll for the league was $4.7 billion. This offseason is still ongoing so it’s too early to tell where things will end up in 2020, but in 2018, average player salaries declined for the first time in 14 years and this year’s qualifying offer — which is based on a subset of average salaries — went down as well."

Going to a ML game is still a relative bargain. If you do the inflation calculations average ticket prices haven't risen that much. Yes, there are very expensive seats now available.
The real problem for the game is the myriad of TV contracts. There's basically no "free" baseball available on TV (unless you use T-Mobile and get the "free" MLB Ticket bonus). The biggest mess is the MLB Playoffs that require fans to have all sorts of channels and the ability to ferret out where that day's games are going to be played.
As for the high salaries - the owners wouldn't pay them if they weren't also making money. The long-term deals are just a way to stretch out the payments. In other words, they're getting the player to agree to payouts over 9 years rather than bundling the $300M in a three or four-year term. This allows the team to avoid/limit the luxury tax.

The biggest insanity of it all is the states and cities that use taxpayer money to pay for stadiums, etc. for the ML teams (also their minor league/ST complexes).

https://mlb.nbcsports.com/2019/12/31/top-25-baseball-stories-of-the-decade-no-3-baseball-teams-become-cash-cows/

This, as far as I'm concerned, is the final word on it. Baseball teams aren't even "rooting for laundry" anymore. They're hedge funds now.