Effects of commercialization on baseball
...y most teams; a trend of choosing the money making route as opposed to what the players wanted which would continue for years to come. It is good to note that now, 70 years later, the Chicago Cubs still play the majority of their games during the day, and did not even install lights in their stadium until 1988. Overall, baseball came out of the Depression alright, even helped keep up the spirits of Americans until World War II started. Then, two major things happened that affected all sports; radio and television. First, of course, games were broadcast over the radio for those who could not get to the stadiums to see the games live. The first was in August of 1921; but it did not really catch on until the late 30s as a regular thing. 26 August in 1939 was the first game broadcast on television and by the next few years following WW II, many teams had their entire season broadcasted. From this point on, broadcasting had an enormous impact on baseball; however, it was it until the 1960s and 70s that commercialization took its toll. Before television and radio, most of the money in baseball was made off of ticket sales and hot dogs; in other words, people attending the games. Now, most of the money is made is the selling of broadcasting rights, merchandise licencing deals, and sponsorships. Once games were being regularly broadcast on television, locally and nationally, attendance did drop slightly, as feared. Teams tried local blackouts to force people to go to the games, but it did not help. However, baseball was getting more money from sponsors and broadcasting rights, so they did not make any less money; just shifted the source. Then, problems came in the late 60s into the 70s. Attendance was very poor and operating profits were just barely on the positive side. The 60s are usually called the ‘expansion era’ since during that decade, 10 new teams were formed and there were a few teams moving cities (both thanks to the anti-trust exemption); neither of which had been happening in the past 50 years. It is usually difficult to get fans to start loyalties to a brand new team they do not care about yet, which probably attributed to this decline in interest and attendance in baseball. Also for the first time, the Super Bowl of the National Football League was getting higher ratings than the World Series. Owners knew they had to do something to change this around and get people back to the ball parks. While they knew good pitching was key to winning, owner felt that improving offensive numbers could help increase fans’ interest in attending games again. On 6 April 1973; their solution came to bat for the first time. Ron Blombery of the New York Yankees became the first designated hitter(DH) in baseball history2. The DH is a player who bats in the pitcher’s spot in the lineup. The advantage of this is that most pitchers, since they only pitch every five days, do not bat often, so they are usually not good batters. Therefore the owners of the American League decided to spark offensive numbers, they would get the pitcher out of the lineup and put a more talented bat in their place. This set off much debate, especially since it was only picked up by the American League and not the National League. So-called baseball ‘purists’ claim that this took away from the unity and purity of the game, and actually still debated to this today. The plan obviously worked because since this rule was put in effect offensive number have gone higher than people would have thought possible. No one ever thought Roger Maris’s 61 home-run season in 1961 could have ever been broken, yet in 1998, 2 players, Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa blew it away with 70 and 66 home-run; which was followed in 2002 by Barry Bond’s 72 home-runs. However it must be noted that all three of these players play for the National League, which never even had the DH. Today, these ‘purists’ feel that it is time to do away with the DH rule. Obviously there is hardly any need for any extra offense, and attendance and television viewership are higher than ever before. Of course there were changes made to baseball made in favour of making money over the players or fan preferences prior to this; but never any that effected the rules of the game to this extent. It was definitely the mid 70s that would prove to be the turning point for baseball. It was this time period that would show that making money far out weighs any other aspect of the sport. The next rule change, however, finally put the power back in the hands of the players and gave them a chance to cash in on the tremendous amounts of money being made off them. In the early 70s, player finally formed a union that worked. They have tried since the late 19th century, but until now, none of them had been very effective. This time, however, it was different; in 1976, the players fought and won. The ‘reserve clause’ was finally done away with and a new era of ‘free agency’ began. The impact of this was tremendous. Player could now sign contracts with teams and when they were up, basically, shop around for the best offer. Once the contract is up, they have a short arbitration time with their current team to negotiate a new contract, however, once that is up, if they did not reach an agreement, the player could sign with any team he wants, an excellent bargaining tool. Before free agency, the owners were monopolistically exploiting the players; they were paid only about 9-12% of the Marginal Revenue Product (MRP), which is what they should have been paid, i.e. their worth3. After the removal of the reserve clause, players were getting paid much closer, sometimes even higher than MRP. In 1979, Nolan Ryan made the first $1 million deal. Within five years, there were 36 players earning $1 million or more. However, it is from this point on that most of today’s economic problems in baseball stem from. In 1983, Major League Baseball (MLB) made a television contract for $1.1 billion4. This was the first time the revenue from broadcast actually exceeded revenue from game attendance. Players saw this and felt owners were still keeping too much of the profit. During the 1980s, offensive statistic were higher than ever. Mark McGuire, in his rookie season was already hitting 49 home-runs a season. In 1987 there were 28 players with 30 or more home-runs; unheard of a decade ago. Players believed they deserved more since they were producing more and this led to a series of strikes throughout the 80s and into the early 90s. 1993 was the last straw. The Baltimore Orioles were sold for a sporting franchise record of $173 million4. The next season began a strike that lasted about an entire year, which ended up cancelling the 1994 World Series. Not much was resolved between players and owners, but the effects were devastating on attendance the next couple of years. Lucky for MLB 1996 saw some of the biggest offensive number ever, not to mention an exciting World Series and finally brought fans back. Since then, attendance has been up for some teams, the so-called big market team in the larger cities, such as New York, Chicago or LA. However, teams in smaller market areas, such as Kansas City, Tampa Bay or Milwaukee have been having major problems with attendance, television viewership and interest in the teams in general. The disparity of finance in baseball today between teams in huge. The pay roll of the New York Yankees today is and astounding $184 million. The Tampa bay Devil-Rays will pay their players a mere total of $20 million this year5, less than some single players of the Yankees. In December of 2001, Bud Selig, commissioner of Major League Baseball, went to the House Judiciary Committee of the US Congress, to ask for help with this situation. The fact is, there are more teams closer to the Devil-Rays payroll than the Yankees. According to the numbers Selig showed to the Committee, at least one-third of MLB’s teams are losing large amounts of money in recent years. Many are only making enough to stay in operation due to the fact that in 1996, MLB agreed to a revenue sharing program where the more successful teams basically share the wealth to keep the rest afloat. According to Selig, MLB in total is $3 billion in debt. From 1995 to the present, only two teams, the Yankees and Cleveland Indians have turned profit at all, the two teams with the largest and most loyal fan base. Of course there have been many criticisms of these numbers. For one thing, Selig has refused to get anymore specific with his numbers, which to some people raise their skepticism right off the bat. Another is the fact that this past off season, John Henry bought the Red Sox for $660 million. In addition, the owner of the Montreal Expos, supposedly the team worst off, bought the Florida Mar...