Wendy Thurm on the Mariners TV Deal
Dave · April 19, 2013 at 10:20 am · Filed Under Mariners
Over at FanGraphs, Wendy Thurm has been doing a great job keeping track of all the various television rights deals in MLB, and today, she has a column on the Mariners new venture. If you’re interested in the concepts that drive the decisions between a team owning their own RSN or licensing their broadcast rights to an existing network, you should check the piece out. Wendy has as good a handle on these issues as anyone.
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That was an interesting read – thank you for posting the link.
Some of her thoughts parallel what Marc had shared here earlier. Let’s hope the “bubble”, if it exists, is long lasting…
Wendy does have a good handle on the legal and business end of the game, I enjoy her work. Back in late January I wrote a piece for the North and South of Royal Brougham blog which I titled The opportunity horizon for the Mariners. Essentially it suggested they make a move like this before Hansen moved into the market. Obviously they didn’t the idea from that item but I’m really glad to see them make this move as it will allow them to be financially competitive with the other teams in our division. With the increase in income from MLBs national media package from $25MM to $52MM starting next year this will most likely be the last season the team has a payroll under $100MM.
You have to keep in mind that the national television rights increase doesn’t all go to the players. Revenue is not passed through at 100%. Each team is seeing a ~$25 million raise in national TV contract revenue, but that only translates to $10 to $15 million in increased payroll. There are non-player costs to running a team, and profits aren’t distributed solely to the players.
Yeah, wasn’t that the accusation against Carl Pohlad for many years – he was essentially just pocketing the revenue sharing money?