Would it be possible for a number of baseball teams to join together and force revenue sharing and a salary cap by controlling broadcast rights?
I don’t know what the law is, but I assume that it is permitted to broadcast the opposing team with impunity because that’s the way baseball has been set up. Could the poorer teams stop the rich teams from broadcasting their games, based on a legal argument (I have no idea what it would be, maybe the rights to the logos, players, or whatever)? This would significantly cut the broadcast revenue of the large market teams, perhaps forcing them to cut a deal.
I’m not sure I’ve explained this clearly, but if teams wanted to curb the spending of the Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, and the like, could they conceivably do this? Or is there no legal rights held by each club for the use of their players, logos, etc. in a broadcast?
In that case, to answer your question, not only can small market teams force changes in the CBA, they already have.
Whether you agree with the model or not is irrelevant, it should be assumed both sides are content with the deal as evidenced by the lack of labor strife the last time the collective bargaining agreement came up for renewal.
As for your impression of the revenue sharing model, you’re a bit mistaken. 30% of local revenues go into the pot, and a portion of the national broadcast revenues go into the pot as well. The disbursement of the broadcast revenues is weighted in favor of smaller teams, meaning they get a bigger piece of the pie.
Since we’re in GD territory now, I’ll also add imo the model has worked as well as can be expected, small market teams are much more competitive (and profitable) when properly managed and the Yankees and Mets have been unsuccessful buying themselves World Series rings.
You know that disclaimer they read during the games, about not re-broadcasting the game without the written permission of Major League Baseball? That’s because MLB controls the broadcast rights of all their teams. It’s part of a revenue-sharing agreement between teams to make sure everyone gets their fair share (the rights for the Yankees cost far more than the rights for the Royals). By agreeing to this revenue-sharing the teams lose the right to restrict the broadcast of their games.
There is a national broadcast agreement, and certainly the small market teams could set rules on that (but, IIRC, in order to make a rule change, you need more than just a majority, which means at least some of the big market teams would have to agree).
But that’s a moot point. Teams get most of their money from local broadcast rights, and that is not shared with other teams. The Yankee’s money comes not from the national broadcast agreement, but from their own YES Network (just like the Mets get it from the SNY Network), plus agreements with local broadcasters to carry their games. You could cut off all the network TV money and the Yankees would barely feel it.
Even if you managed to agree not to let the Yankees broadcast your games, you only have control of your home games, which gives the Yankees 81 games a year to broadcast. But that can’t happen because your local affiliate is not going to want to black out Yankees games, since they get good ratings. If they don’t broadcast Yankee games, then they are going to pay you less than they would if there was no restriction. So you end up cutting your own revenue.
Finally, the YES network has programming in addition to live games, so even if they didn’t broadcast any Yankee games at all, it would still be a revenue stream for the Yankees.
Thanks for the very detailed answer. I knew about the home team retaining the broadcast rights for their team, but is that just a by-law of MLB? Could that be changed if whatever vote that is required to pass a rule in MLB was achieved? (I assume it would be the super majority). I also knew about the YES network, although I didn’t realize it was so vast.
How about this scenario? Let’s say the number of teams needed for a super majority vote got together and wanted to force a hard salary cap. Say $100 million. So no matter how much money a team like the Yankees brought in from other sources like the YES network, they still had that limit. Could that possibly work? I guess the Yankees and any other team that felt hosed by such a rule could withdraw from MLB and perhaps try to form another league, but until that time they technically could be controlled, right?
A hard salary cap would require changing the Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players’ union. It’s extremely unlikely the union would agree to such a change in the CBA unless every team were going bankrupt simultaneously.
Of course, if either the owners or the players were to act on their own, it would raise questions of collusion, and historically that’s tended to cause more problems than it solved, particularly for the owners.