MLB teams lost a combined $1.8 Billion last year

[Goldfan]

The broader issue here is that MLB can no longer count on "TV money" to continue to ramp up every time deals are due for renegotiation. The media landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade or so and will continue to do so, and the revenue streams have returned to the more localized forms they once were. And MLB still lives in the 90s (Blackout restrictions? Are you kidding me?). Baseball needs to get a salary cap. As much as I despise the league office and the collective owners I side with the owners on that one.

2025 National MLB revenue is 1.8bil
60mil per team
2025 Cards Local TV Revenue
58mil

The National Rev has more then tripled since 2006
The Cards Rev has more than doubled since 2006 and while it’s down from the original 75mil deal. Anyone who thinks a 17mil reduction is THE reason for BDW road to poverty should stop sipping the Koolaid
Cards Ticket prices have more than doubled since 2006

[Melville]

MLB teams did not lose $1.8 billion last year.
Zero chance that number is real.
That is propaganda designed to mislead fans into supporting "the owners' side" as they and the union jockey for PR position in the coming months.

[Bomber1]

The broader issue here is that MLB can no longer count on "TV money" to continue to ramp up every time deals are due for renegotiation. The media landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade or so and will continue to do so, and the revenue streams have returned to the more localized forms they once were. And MLB still lives in the 90s (Blackout restrictions? Are you kidding me?). Baseball needs to get a salary cap. As much as I despise the league office and the collective owners I side with the owners on that one.

If you were a baseball player why would you ever agree to cap your own salary. In fact why would a person do that in any aspect of business? The fans don't come out to watch the owners play. The fans don't plunk down money for jersey's with the owners name on them. The product is the players. Without them there would be no game. Owners have steadfastly refused to open the books. Why? Because they have a cash cow and a lot of it is hidden. If an owner doesn't want to pay to make a team competitive, that's on them. They deserve the ridicule they get. If Cohen wants to throw money down a hole and still lose, that's on him. Something tells me he'll go back to the drawing board and make the playoffs in the near future. Money wins.

Virtually all union jobs except mlb have caps on their salaries. Sports is the only “union” job where players negotiate their own salaries.

[BrummerStealsHome]

The broader issue here is that MLB can no longer count on "TV money" to continue to ramp up every time deals are due for renegotiation. The media landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade or so and will continue to do so, and the revenue streams have returned to the more localized forms they once were. And MLB still lives in the 90s (Blackout restrictions? Are you kidding me?). Baseball needs to get a salary cap. As much as I despise the league office and the collective owners I side with the owners on that one.

2025 National MLB revenue is 1.8bil
60mil per team
2025 Cards Local TV Revenue
58mil

The National Rev has more then tripled since 2006
The Cards Rev has more than doubled since 2006 and while it’s down from the original 75mil deal. Anyone who thinks a 17mil reduction is THE reason for BDW road to poverty should stop sipping the Koolaid
Cards Ticket prices have more than doubled since 2006

This isn't 2006. You can bet the farm that revenue will not triple nor the team reevenue double in the next decade. There is evidence that national TV money has peaked in real dollars. MLB got lucky when ESPN sent the shockwave of ESPN opting out, but are the likes of Apple TV and Netflix going to be the reliable cash cows the likes of ABC, Fox, and NBC have been? I don't see it. MLB media revenue is only going to get more and more local. The luxury tax will fail. Baseball needs a salary cap.

[Melville]

The broader issue here is that MLB can no longer count on "TV money" to continue to ramp up every time deals are due for renegotiation. The media landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade or so and will continue to do so, and the revenue streams have returned to the more localized forms they once were. And MLB still lives in the 90s (Blackout restrictions? Are you kidding me?). Baseball needs to get a salary cap. As much as I despise the league office and the collective owners I side with the owners on that one.

2025 National MLB revenue is 1.8bil
60mil per team
2025 Cards Local TV Revenue
58mil

The National Rev has more then tripled since 2006
The Cards Rev has more than doubled since 2006 and while it’s down from the original 75mil deal. Anyone who thinks a 17mil reduction is THE reason for BDW road to poverty should stop sipping the Koolaid
Cards Ticket prices have more than doubled since 2006

This isn't 2006. You can bet the farm that revenue will not triple nor the team reevenue double in the next decade. There is evidence that national TV money has peaked in real dollars. MLB got lucky when ESPN sent the shockwave of ESPN opting out, but are the likes of Apple TV and Netflix going to be the reliable cash cows the likes of ABC, Fox, and NBC have been? I don't see it. MLB media revenue is only going to get more and more local. The luxury tax will fail. Baseball needs a salary cap.

Getting rid of the anti-trust exemption would be far easier and far more effective than a hard cap.

[Bubble4427]

The broader issue here is that MLB can no longer count on "TV money" to continue to ramp up every time deals are due for renegotiation. The media landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade or so and will continue to do so, and the revenue streams have returned to the more localized forms they once were. And MLB still lives in the 90s (Blackout restrictions? Are you kidding me?). Baseball needs to get a salary cap. As much as I despise the league office and the collective owners I side with the owners on that one.

If you were a baseball player why would you ever agree to cap your own salary. In fact why would a person do that in any aspect of business? The fans don't come out to watch the owners play. The fans don't plunk down money for jersey's with the owners name on them. The product is the players. Without them there would be no game. Owners have steadfastly refused to open the books. Why? Because they have a cash cow and a lot of it is hidden. If an owner doesn't want to pay to make a team competitive, that's on them. They deserve the ridicule they get. If Cohen wants to throw money down a hole and still lose, that's on him. Something tells me he'll go back to the drawing board and make the playoffs in the near future. Money wins.

All of the other sports use some sort of a hard salary cap. Baseball is losing ground yearly because they refuse to do what’s best for the sport and ALL of the fans…not just big market ones.

Baseball is broken. It has been and unless the players and owners come together to do what’s best for the sport long term….it will continue to spiral. Baseball is the worst managed sport (by commissioner) of the 4 big sports….and being worse than NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is next to impossible….yet baseball seems to have achieved that.

[SalukiTex]

According to ChatGPT
Yes — according to reports, Major League Baseball (MLB) informed team owners that the 30 clubs collectively posted about US $1.8 billion in accounting losses last year. 

However — and this is an important caveat — these are paper losses, not necessarily cash‐flow deficits. For example:
• The losses are “accounting losses” meaning they reflect things like amortization of franchise purchase costs, player‐contract depreciation, etc., rather than purely operating losses. 
• They do not necessarily mean the franchises are losing money in terms of market value or overall business health; many teams’ valuations continue to rise. 
• One widely cited figure: the New York Mets reportedly were at the top with around US $350 million in losses. 

So yes — the number has been reported — but it should be treated with caution and context.

Also,

Why reported losses can be beneficial

1. Depreciation & amortization create paper losses

Sports owners get large tax deductions from things that don’t reduce real cash:
• Depreciation of stadium improvements
• Amortization of franchise purchase price
• Amortization of player contracts (a big one)

These reduce taxable income even if the team is making positive cash flow.

This is why owners can show “accounting losses” while still being profitable on a cash basis.

2. Losses can offset other income

If an owner has other profitable businesses, reported MLB losses can sometimes:
• Reduce taxable income from those businesses
• Lower their overall tax bill

This makes the losses valuable.

3. Franchise appreciation is not taxed until sold

Even if a team “loses money” on paper, the franchise value tends to increase hundreds of millions or billions over time.
Owners pay no tax on that increase until they sell — similar to real estate.

So:
• Paper losses now
• Massive untaxed asset growth later

Very favorable structure.

[lordoffatness]

Https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/steve ... -mets-deal

As the Chat GPT summary said, the tax implications can be very beneficial when these billionaires purchase a team.

And how many teams have a "ballpark village" or other entity that generates a ton of money that is not considered baseball revenue?

[Goldfan]

The broader issue here is that MLB can no longer count on "TV money" to continue to ramp up every time deals are due for renegotiation. The media landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade or so and will continue to do so, and the revenue streams have returned to the more localized forms they once were. And MLB still lives in the 90s (Blackout restrictions? Are you kidding me?). Baseball needs to get a salary cap. As much as I despise the league office and the collective owners I side with the owners on that one.

2025 National MLB revenue is 1.8bil
60mil per team
2025 Cards Local TV Revenue
58mil

The National Rev has more then tripled since 2006
The Cards Rev has more than doubled since 2006 and while it’s down from the original 75mil deal. Anyone who thinks a 17mil reduction is THE reason for BDW road to poverty should stop sipping the Koolaid
Cards Ticket prices have more than doubled since 2006

This isn't 2006. You can bet the farm that revenue will not triple nor the team reevenue double in the next decade. There is evidence that national TV money has peaked in real dollars. MLB got lucky when ESPN sent the shockwave of ESPN opting out, but are the likes of Apple TV and Netflix going to be the reliable cash cows the likes of ABC, Fox, and NBC have been? I don't see it. MLB media revenue is only going to get more and more local. The luxury tax will fail. Baseball needs a salary cap.

Owners pay the players
Owners need each other in order to produce Revenue to pay players
The players have no other market
30 of the most successful people on the planet should be able to figure this out in 2025
This narrative that owners must continue to escalate salaries year after year is illogical and has a very simple answer DON’T

[WaltsSuccessor]

Just the owners trying to gain a positional advantage, in advance of the upcoming labor negotiations. If it was a true loss, who in their right mind would own a MLB team? Better to own a Bananas team and barnstorm.

How much of the Dewitts salary, homes, cars, expenses are accounted for in “operating expenses”

You know you just described tax fraud, right? Yes small business owners get away with that all day. Billionaires both are under more tax scrutiny and have expensive tax advisors that keep them from doing obvious, dumb things like that.

They might have him create some super complicated tax shelter to hid millions, but they aren't going to have him deducting personal expenses through St. Louis Cardinals, LLC. That's amateur hour.

You don’t think that Chairman and CEO BDW JR and President BDWIII of the St. Louis Cardinals draw a salary from St. Louis Cardinals LLC?

Sure, but it’s going to be market based. As an LLC, it’s advantageous for employee-owners to pay themselves the bare minimum salary to save on payroll taxes in favor of making larger tax free distributions. However, the IRS requires them to pay market based salaries to employee-owners to counteract that.

There’s no scenario where an LLC owner would purposefully pay themselves excess salary, pay the 1.45% Medicare tax on it, just so they could intentionally show a loss on the books. It’s a flow through entity. Doesn’t make sense to do that.

[CCard]

The broader issue here is that MLB can no longer count on "TV money" to continue to ramp up every time deals are due for renegotiation. The media landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade or so and will continue to do so, and the revenue streams have returned to the more localized forms they once were. And MLB still lives in the 90s (Blackout restrictions? Are you kidding me?). Baseball needs to get a salary cap. As much as I despise the league office and the collective owners I side with the owners on that one.

If you were a baseball player why would you ever agree to cap your own salary. In fact why would a person do that in any aspect of business? The fans don't come out to watch the owners play. The fans don't plunk down money for jersey's with the owners name on them. The product is the players. Without them there would be no game. Owners have steadfastly refused to open the books. Why? Because they have a cash cow and a lot of it is hidden. If an owner doesn't want to pay to make a team competitive, that's on them. They deserve the ridicule they get. If Cohen wants to throw money down a hole and still lose, that's on him. Something tells me he'll go back to the drawing board and make the playoffs in the near future. Money wins.

All of the other sports use some sort of a hard salary cap. Baseball is losing ground yearly because they refuse to do what’s best for the sport and ALL of the fans…not just big market ones.

Baseball is broken. It has been and unless the players and owners come together to do what’s best for the sport long term….it will continue to spiral. Baseball is the worst managed sport (by commissioner) of the 4 big sports….and being worse than NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is next to impossible….yet baseball seems to have achieved that.

Again, you can't fault the players for getting what they can. People come to see them not some old fat owner. The players union has said before that they're willing to talk but owners have to open the books which is something the owners steadfastly refuse to do. You can't cry poor without showing some proof. If the owners want to lock out the players it'll be bad for everyone involved. It took a long time and a homerun chase to bring fans back last time. Something does have to be done though. Stop the deferred money spigot. Make teams have to pay as they go. Increase revenue sharing so small markets can at least have a chance. Increase the luxury tax. But a cap? I don't know about that. Sure football and basketball have caps but I bet that gets renegotiated when their contract expires.

[CCard]

The broader issue here is that MLB can no longer count on "TV money" to continue to ramp up every time deals are due for renegotiation. The media landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade or so and will continue to do so, and the revenue streams have returned to the more localized forms they once were. And MLB still lives in the 90s (Blackout restrictions? Are you kidding me?). Baseball needs to get a salary cap. As much as I despise the league office and the collective owners I side with the owners on that one.

If you were a baseball player why would you ever agree to cap your own salary. In fact why would a person do that in any aspect of business? The fans don't come out to watch the owners play. The fans don't plunk down money for jersey's with the owners name on them. The product is the players. Without them there would be no game. Owners have steadfastly refused to open the books. Why? Because they have a cash cow and a lot of it is hidden. If an owner doesn't want to pay to make a team competitive, that's on them. They deserve the ridicule they get. If Cohen wants to throw money down a hole and still lose, that's on him. Something tells me he'll go back to the drawing board and make the playoffs in the near future. Money wins.

Virtually all union jobs except mlb have caps on their salaries. Sports is the only “union” job where players negotiate their own salaries.

By it's very nature, unions "negotiate" their own salaries. All unions.

[CCard]

The broader issue here is that MLB can no longer count on "TV money" to continue to ramp up every time deals are due for renegotiation. The media landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade or so and will continue to do so, and the revenue streams have returned to the more localized forms they once were. And MLB still lives in the 90s (Blackout restrictions? Are you kidding me?). Baseball needs to get a salary cap. As much as I despise the league office and the collective owners I side with the owners on that one.

If you were a baseball player why would you ever agree to cap your own salary. In fact why would a person do that in any aspect of business? The fans don't come out to watch the owners play. The fans don't plunk down money for jersey's with the owners name on them. The product is the players. Without them there would be no game. Owners have steadfastly refused to open the books. Why? Because they have a cash cow and a lot of it is hidden. If an owner doesn't want to pay to make a team competitive, that's on them. They deserve the ridicule they get. If Cohen wants to throw money down a hole and still lose, that's on him. Something tells me he'll go back to the drawing board and make the playoffs in the near future. Money wins.

Why would they? For the same reasons the players in every other professional sports league did.

The thing is every time there's a new collective bargaining agreement the cap is renegotiated anyway. So while it temporarily caps salaries, in effect it does very little. Not only that, there are myriad ways around the salary caps as we have seen in other sports.

[Bubble4427]

The broader issue here is that MLB can no longer count on "TV money" to continue to ramp up every time deals are due for renegotiation. The media landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade or so and will continue to do so, and the revenue streams have returned to the more localized forms they once were. And MLB still lives in the 90s (Blackout restrictions? Are you kidding me?). Baseball needs to get a salary cap. As much as I despise the league office and the collective owners I side with the owners on that one.

If you were a baseball player why would you ever agree to cap your own salary. In fact why would a person do that in any aspect of business? The fans don't come out to watch the owners play. The fans don't plunk down money for jersey's with the owners name on them. The product is the players. Without them there would be no game. Owners have steadfastly refused to open the books. Why? Because they have a cash cow and a lot of it is hidden. If an owner doesn't want to pay to make a team competitive, that's on them. They deserve the ridicule they get. If Cohen wants to throw money down a hole and still lose, that's on him. Something tells me he'll go back to the drawing board and make the playoffs in the near future. Money wins.

All of the other sports use some sort of a hard salary cap. Baseball is losing ground yearly because they refuse to do what’s best for the sport and ALL of the fans…not just big market ones.

Baseball is broken. It has been and unless the players and owners come together to do what’s best for the sport long term….it will continue to spiral. Baseball is the worst managed sport (by commissioner) of the 4 big sports….and being worse than NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is next to impossible….yet baseball seems to have achieved that.

Again, you can't fault the players for getting what they can. People come to see them not some old fat owner. The players union has said before that they're willing to talk but owners have to open the books which is something the owners steadfastly refuse to do. You can't cry poor without showing some proof. If the owners want to lock out the players it'll be bad for everyone involved. It took a long time and a homerun chase to bring fans back last time. Something does have to be done though. Stop the deferred money spigot. Make teams have to pay as they go. Increase revenue sharing so small markets can at least have a chance. Increase the luxury tax. But a cap? I don't know about that. Sure football and basketball have caps but I bet that gets renegotiated when their contract expires.

All 3 of the other sports have hard caps…and players are not complaining.
When Covid hit the NHL the 2 sides agreed to reopen the agreement and put a halt to increasing the salary cap for 3 years. Again, it’s what is best for the sport.
Baseball needs a hard cap.
Baseball needs a hard floor. By forcing the 10 smaller market teams to spend at least 100-125 million dollars instead of 60 then that should help alleviate the hard cap ceiling. When one teams TV contract is 10 million a year and another team’s is 400 million….who do you think has the better chance to be competitive year in and year out?

The players don’t need the books opened….The Atlanta Braves books are open because of who owns the team. Those records are public. The fact that Atlanta is a mid market team….people/players should be able to figure out how much money is out there.

Hard cap
Hard floor
All players are signed to 3-4 year entry level deals….after those deals are over you can become a free agent or at least an RFA.
If everyone hits free agency earlier (instead of the current 6 years) ALL of the players benefit.

Baseball is broken.

[Goldfan]

Just the owners trying to gain a positional advantage, in advance of the upcoming labor negotiations. If it was a true loss, who in their right mind would own a MLB team? Better to own a Bananas team and barnstorm.

How much of the Dewitts salary, homes, cars, expenses are accounted for in “operating expenses”

You know you just described tax fraud, right? Yes small business owners get away with that all day. Billionaires both are under more tax scrutiny and have expensive tax advisors that keep them from doing obvious, dumb things like that.

They might have him create some super complicated tax shelter to hid millions, but they aren't going to have him deducting personal expenses through St. Louis Cardinals, LLC. That's amateur hour.

You don’t think that Chairman and CEO BDW JR and President BDWIII of the St. Louis Cardinals draw a salary from St. Louis Cardinals LLC?

Sure, but it’s going to be market based. As an LLC, it’s advantageous for employee-owners to pay themselves the bare minimum salary to save on payroll taxes in favor of making larger tax free distributions. However, the IRS requires them to pay market based salaries to employee-owners to counteract that.

There’s no scenario where an LLC owner would purposefully pay themselves excess salary, pay the 1.45% Medicare tax on it, just so they could intentionally show a loss on the books. It’s a flow through entity. Doesn’t make sense to do that.

No Scenario??? Did you see the subject title of this post?

[ICCFIM2]

According to ChatGPT
Yes — according to reports, Major League Baseball (MLB) informed team owners that the 30 clubs collectively posted about US $1.8 billion in accounting losses last year. 

However — and this is an important caveat — these are paper losses, not necessarily cash‐flow deficits. For example:
• The losses are “accounting losses” meaning they reflect things like amortization of franchise purchase costs, player‐contract depreciation, etc., rather than purely operating losses. 
• They do not necessarily mean the franchises are losing money in terms of market value or overall business health; many teams’ valuations continue to rise. 
• One widely cited figure: the New York Mets reportedly were at the top with around US $350 million in losses. 

So yes — the number has been reported — but it should be treated with caution and context.

Also,

Why reported losses can be beneficial

1. Depreciation & amortization create paper losses

Sports owners get large tax deductions from things that don’t reduce real cash:
• Depreciation of stadium improvements
• Amortization of franchise purchase price
• Amortization of player contracts (a big one)

These reduce taxable income even if the team is making positive cash flow.

This is why owners can show “accounting losses” while still being profitable on a cash basis.

2. Losses can offset other income

If an owner has other profitable businesses, reported MLB losses can sometimes:
• Reduce taxable income from those businesses
• Lower their overall tax bill

This makes the losses valuable.

3. Franchise appreciation is not taxed until sold

Even if a team “loses money” on paper, the franchise value tends to increase hundreds of millions or billions over time.
Owners pay no tax on that increase until they sell — similar to real estate.

So:
• Paper losses now
• Massive untaxed asset growth later

Very favorable structure.

Thank you for providing that information. However, there is a lot of confusion regarding what these things really mean and how they should be applied. In particular this comment, "Sports owners get large tax deductions from things that don’t reduce real cash:
• Depreciation of stadium improvements
• Amortization of franchise purchase price
• Amortization of player contracts (a big one).

When it comes to depreciation of stadium improvements and amortization of player contracts that don't reduce real cash. Really, with respect to the stadium improvements, the cash either went out up front or was borrowed and was being paid back. This is absolutely a correct expense for both book and tax. Amortization of player contracts. This is also real cash. In theory, there is only amortization on deferred contracts. Again, this is a real expense for both book and tax. Both of these relate to operating the club and are properly treated as an expense.

Now, the one that should not be an expense is amortization of the franchise purchase price. First, this is an investment and does not relate to operating the club. Second, under the GAAP accounting rules, goodwill/purchase price is only amortized if there is an impairment. Since all of these franchises are going up in value, no impairment is being incurred. The tax rules are different, the amortization is allowed over 15 years. Steve Cohen who purchased the Mets in 2020 for $2.4B would be allowed $160M of amortization per year for tax purposes. But, why that should be treated as a financial expense for this purpose would be generally not correct for accounting rules. Second, this would only apply to recently purchased franchises. The Dewitts for example purchased the club in 1996 more than 15 years ago, so their purchase price would be fully amortized for tax and would now be zero. It would be interesting to know how much of the $1.8B is purchase price amortization. That number for certain should be adjusted out.