UNION FIRES HIGH HEAT!
Players reach breaking point as cost-cutting owners get billions in new TV deal
TAMPA — The players have had enough. The deal for $470 million per year between MLB and TBS was apparently the final straw. After news of the deal broke on Saturday, union chief Tony Clark cited it and announced the players are done negotiating on the 2020 season restart after a 12-week coronavirus shutdown.
They are ready to concede to the previous agreement and play an extremely abbreviated season at the commissioner’s discretion.
“It unfortunately appears that further dialogue with the league would be futile,” Clark said. “It’s time to get back to work. Tell us when and where.” Under the agreement reached back in March to advance some $170 million to the players for salary during the coronavirus shutdown, commissioner Rob Manfred has the power to implement a regular season structure by fiat if the sides are unable to reach a new settlement. All indications are that it will be 48 to 50 games.
The owners claim going beyond that is their breaking point. If they played more games with players receiving full prorated salaries, the owners claim, teams would lose more money than they could afford — up to $640,000 a game because of games without fans. “The industry isn’t very profitable, to be quite honest,” St. Louis Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt said last week.
Saturday, details of the league’s new deal with TBS to broadcast the playoffs leaked. The current deal, which expires after 2021, is for $325 million per year; the new deal bumps that figure up to $470 million, according to reports.
That seemed to fly in the face of the owners crying poverty and was particularly irritating to players, who have been unable to get an honest look at the owners’ finances. The Braves are the only team with transparent books, because they’re owned by a public corporation.
“In recent days, owners have decried the supposed unprofitability of owning a baseball team and the Commissioner has repeatedly threatened to schedule a dramatically shortened season unless players agree to hundreds of millions in further concessions,” Clark’s statement said. “Our response has been consistent that such concessions are unwarranted, would be fundamentally unfair to players, and that our sport deserves the fullest 2020 season possible. These remain our positions today, particularly in light of new reports regarding MLB’s national television rights — information we requested from the league weeks ago but were never provided.”
The players, who are not paid salaries during the postseason, rejected the owners’ latest proposal. The league proposed a 72game season at 80% prorated pay if the postseason was played to completion. Having already agreed to the pro-rated salary, the players feel they have already given millions in salary concessions. They want more games to recoup as much of their salary as possible.
The union had until Sunday to respond, but by Saturday night they rejected it forcefully.
Clark reiterated that the players had gone into these negotia
tions to restart the season after shutting down on March 12 in good faith and took considerable financial hits.
“Since March, the Association has made it clear that our No.1 focus is playing the fullest season possible, as soon as possible, as safely as possible,” he said. “Players agreed to billions in monetary concessions as a means to that end, and in the face of repeated media leaks and misdirection we made additional proposals to inject new revenues into the industry – proposals that would benefit the owners, players, broadcast partners, and fans alike.”
MLB fired back with a statement accusing the players of not negotiating in good faith and implying it will move forward with a shortened season.
“We are disappointed that the MLBPA has chosen not to negotiate in good faith over resumption of play after MLB has made three successive proposals that would provide players, Clubs and our fans with an amicable resolution to a very difficult situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the league’s statement read. “The MLBPA understands that the agreement reached on March 26 was premised on the parties’ mutual understanding that the players would be paid their full salaries only if play resumed in front of fans, and that another negotiation was to take place if Clubs could not generate the billions of dollars of ticket revenue required to pay players. The MLBPA’s position that players are entitled to virtually all the revenue from a 2020 season played without fans is not fair to the thousands of other baseball employees that Clubs and our office are supporting financially during this very difficult 2020 season.”
Baseball once had a chance to come out of this as the champions of the nation’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. The nation was shut down, 115,000 Americans have died, and the economy tanked. Baseball could have been the first sport to return and the first sign of national normalcy.
Now, with the bitterness of the negotiations out in the open, however, baseball has turned off fans and set up the next collective bargaining negotiations to be a war between players and owners. It will leave just a skeleton of a season and very few happy players or fans.