Economists: Baseball's Debt Misleading
In this article, by Darren reveal of ESPN.com, states that the panel reports for MLB teams show a loss of over $1 billion during a five-year period (1995-19990. It also showed that only three teams earned a profit (Cleveland, Colorado and the New York Yankees). Also in the article it states that there has to be some kind of manipulation involved with franchise accounts and their books to show this lose. They are repositioning profits to show this debt, but why would they do this? Not only is this number blown out of portion, but there has to be many other teams that are making a profit simply on TV contracts. There are many teams that have television stations that simply show the team in action. What happened to the money from these contracts? Advertisements are a huge money maker especially during baseball games because of the number of inning breaks, pitching changes, and the length of the games themselves. So where is all this money?
$ports create lots of revenue through TV for the professional teams, and you would think American's most watched sport (Baseball) would be raking in the dough just from TV. Not to mention the constant increase in price for tickets all across the league.
1 comment:
In examining the numbers reported by the teams, it seemed like the top performing teams monetarily during that period had two common themes: either they were successful on the field, or were new expansion franchises just breaking into the league.
I agree that the franchises are doing some financial manipulating to achieve the illustration of poverty. Certainly, the teams would want to plead poverty to create the image among local governments that they're suffering from some sort of economic problems. The constant ticket price increases and television and radio revenues had to have been understated to such a degree in this study that the financial numbers are almost total lies. In reality, I figure at least two-thirds of the league made some kind of money during this stretch of time.
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