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My only guess would be that it would be frowned upon if Fox owned the Dodgers and were forming TV partnerships with other teams.
Time-Warner Cable.
The reason these prices are getting so high is because of all of the RSN that currently exist. Which is also why these media companies are locking these teams up to long term deals. There is a TV war going on right now and the winners are sports teams.
If Time-Warner were to get the Dodgers they would have the Lakers and Dodgers on their channel which would for the most part cover their year round programming needs (plus they have the Sparks and Galaxy).
There's speculation that Fox's long-term goal is to launch a nationwide sports network to rival ESPN. They couldn't own any teams under that scenario.
I wouldn't bet on that.
Yeah, that's the answer. I don't care about the Lakers so I forgot that this happened. I guess this price makes sense then. The Dodgers are second to the Lakers but it's a strong second.
Really? Disney owned ESPN, the Angels, and Ducks for decades concurrently. They only sold the Angels and Ducks because they wanted to get out of the of the sports team business, not because they had to.
Robo Vin will be ready.
Is this creating a bubble? Maybe that helps make the back end of the long deal less of a concern for the Dodgers.
'will'? What do you think happened to that robot in Twilight Zone episode, "The Mighty Casey"?
I realize "nationwide Canada" isn't quite the same as "nationwide America" but the Jays are owned by a national sports channel (or the company that runs one).
Is there a legal issue in the States that would make this infeasible?
They got most of the big ones, Direct TV for instance was the last holdout and they signed a few weeks ago.
Well, there's still DISH, but nobody cares about DISH.
Please, this is Hollywood. People won't even notice the difference when CGI Vin takes over.
Local TV money being basically the only thing that should rightfully be subject to revenue sharing as it is based on actual market size rather than fantasy "market" size where Toronto is smaller than St. Louis, I would agree with that insurrection.
I've long thought that teams that draw well on the road should get a higher % of shared revenue. It helps create businesses that are interested in building strong national fanbases. Now of course I've also long believed that if a team doesn't want to share a market and won't let other teams move into their market either through relocation, expansion, or broadcasting into their territory they should have to pay for that privilege. I'm guessing the amount of money that a team like the Yankees make because they only have to share NYC and the surrounding areas with the Mets greatly exceeds any of the money they might make by getting a larger split of the home team's gate when they are traveling.
And which teams would those be? Let's hold their collective feet to the fire.
I believe it is all of them.
Not all fiefdoms are created equal. If you don't want the earl from the neighboring valley to raid your valley you come to an understanding. Either that or you kill him. I don't think the Yankees are interested in killing the Rays.
So who wants to relinquish their right to an exclusive fiefdom in order to compete directly against their rivals? How much is Jeffrey Loria willing to pay David Glass not to swoop down into his top-10 market? He's willing to pay for that exclusive fiefdom, right?
Well the Rays are being artifically constrained from moving down into the much larger Miami market. How much is Loria paying them to keep them away?
More recent data from the same source as April's data:
"Disney's rivals are eyeing the lucrative $5.15 monthly subscription fee that ESPN can command for each customer, according to media consultant SNL Kagan, the highest among cable channels. Fox Sports North, the most lucrative of the 12 Fox regional sports channels tracked by SNL, collects $3.68 a month for each subscriber.
In new contract talks, Fox plans to negotiate higher carriage fees for YES, which currently charges $2.99 a month per subscriber, a source told Reuters."
ya, YR hates revenue sharing. but now that the dodgers are going to be overspending, he won't have to feel like the yankees are MLB's whipping boys.
i guess if i understood this calculus i wouldn't be as poor as i am today, but it looks to me like the guggenheim people saw an opportunity that others didn't. los angeles is a huge city, with a huge economy and the dodgers just haven't exploited that in the same way the yankees have exploited NY. what no one noticed when it was happening was that frank mccourt was really kind of a fake and didn't have the money or the savvy to turn the dodgers into the kind of dominant franchise that the o'malleys did.
now suddenly guggenheim is acting like the yankees, committing to a huge payroll in the hopes that by doing so they'll have a winner and the fans will flock to the stadium and the TV rights will become precious. they may have miscalculated in this year's big trades, but there's nothing stopping them from trying again if they hit the jackpot on this tv deal. they've gotten lucky in that time warner grabbed the lakers, but maybe they saw this coming and they are making their own luck.
the only fly in the ointment was mentioned earlier, namely the length of the contract. 25 yrs does seem like a lot of time. alot can go wrong for the seller.
Perhaps, but the guy who got YES up and running (Leo Hindery) was also in the Dodgers bidding, but he didn't come anywhere near the $2.15B paid by Guggenheim. The Guggenheim group has some smart people, but it seems like they mostly blew the other bidders out of the water because, unlike Hindery and Steve Cohen and Stan Kroenke, they were spending mostly other people's money rather than their own.
I don't see how Selig can dole out "exceptions" to the revenue sharing rules. Seems like Mr. & Mrs. Steinbrenner were penalized for not getting a messy divorce.
OK, not sure if my demographic stats are totally correct, but let me take a stab at the math. Here are my assumptions.
- There are about 18M people living in the greater LA area.
- There are about 1 household per 3 people, so about 6M households.
- About 60% of households have cable, so about 3.6M potential subscribers.
- I'm also assuming that the sentence meant "higher carriage fees THAN YES" instead of "for", so let's guess $4 per month per subscriber.
That grosses $14M per month, or $156M a year just in the LA area with total coverage. Without counting carrying it in other areas such as San Diego and Phoenix that currently don't have professional baseball franchises (Zing!!!!). And without counting any advertising revenues Fox gets from the RSN.
I'm sure I'm way off on the actual potential, but it seems like $150M a year in revenues is really the bottom of what Fox can do now, and with inflation, obviously do much more per year over time. It still seems crazy to me, but not implausible. The crazy part is what has happened in the last few years to suddenly balloon the potential revenues this high, and why wasn't some of that reflected in deals done 3 or 4 years ago?
Time Warner: 2.3 million
DirecTV: 1.7 million
Cox: 1.2 million
Those are just the top 3 providers in the LA area. Dish, Charter, Verizon Fios, and AT&T Uverse are all sub 1 million individually, but collectively add up to another 2 million or so.
$4 a month is probably low too. The Lakers are getting nearly that much for 57 games a year. Speculating based on how much more money the Dodgers are getting for their TV rights that number is likely to be more like $6 a month.
No. Fox just bought 49% of YES and is now the largest shareholder. It's basically Fox Sports YES now.
Ha! I'm taking the under.
Not really. Time Warner is getting $3.40 and Fox Sports North is getting the most of all Fox RSN at $3.68. ESPN doesn't even get $6 a month and they get way more eyeballs than a RSN.
The LA RSN region is probably at something like 8 to 10 million subscribers. If all those subscribers have to pay you're looking at probably 25 to 30 million dollars a month in carriage fees. Now then it is entirely possible that all subscribers do not have to pay. It depends on what tier the RSN is on which has been part of the fight for several channels. If the RSN is on an optional tier then the RSN does not get a fee based on all subscribers but get fees from subscribers that opt in to the tier containing the RSN. I don't know how it works in LA but for me in DC I have an optional sports tier that costs me $10 a month and it contains the RSN and other sports channels.
are you saying none of the guggenheim principals have invested any of their own money in the guggenheim entity? they have no skin in the game? i'd think they are investing other people's money along with their own money.
owning a baseball franchise has been historically a license to print money -- but that's just me, i don't believe for a minute any of the owners who poor mouth their financial state. the potential upside for L.A. is pretty big. i don't think anybody with money in the guggenheim partnership is going to be complaining if the deal gets made by tuesday.
The Yankees get guaranteed revenue confiscation while the Lorias of the world get guaranteed revenue supplements, I don't see how that favors the Yankees in any form. It's just your basic "makers vs takers" argument, except here the "takers" are people like David Glass, who made a fortune depressing income for millions. Windfalls for me, but none for thee. Moral hazards, leads to dependence in the lower classes you know, Glass has been properly vetted for moral rectitude by virtue of the fact he's already rich.
Pity McCoy, I actually thought you're #29 was hinting at some frank honesty whereby teams could choose a protected fiefdom and forfeit this sort of perpetual welfare or choose the rugged individualism that has been the hallmark of American capitalism whenever such issues are discussed within earshot of the common slob and reap the rewards undoubtedly to come. If these heroes of capitalism can't hope to compete without massive wealth distribution then what hope do the sad 47%'ers have?
Given the completely opaque manner in which Bolshevik Bud oversees his glorious redistributionist boondoogle it's likely we have no idea the extent and dispensation of the exceptions. There's a reason why MLB no longer releases any details of Bud's Billionaire Boondoggle after doing so for a few years, and to paraphrase our President during a recent debate, he ain't keeping it secret because it's so awesome.
MLB is a monopoly that makes all the owners assloads of cash. If the Yankees or anyone else don't like what the majority of baseball owners like they can then try to make money elsewhere. Considering the Steinbrenners have never been in any kind of hurry to divest themselves of their investment I don't really care how much money out of their assload of money MLB takes from them. I do not weep for the Steinbrenners when they make 200 million dollars in profit instead of 300 million dollars in profit.
I know this will get ignored because you are a broken record on this issue and regardless of what or anyone else say you'll keep trotting out the same tired lines post after post, year after year. Have fun with that.
Prices are going up. You believe that Fox Sports is going to pay a record amount for the rights to the team and then just charge similar carriage rates? They are going to pass those costs on to the carriers and the carriers are going to pass those costs on to their customers.
Fox Sports West, Fox Sports Prime Ticket, Time Warner Sportsnet, PAC-12 channel, etc are all part of the basic package in LA. It has been a major issue in all of the carriage disputes, but so far no local team is on a sports tier locally (DirecTV is still in dispute with the PAC-12 over this issue). The sports tiers generally contain RSNs with content that is not based in the local footprint (other FSN channels, B1G, etc) and professional networks (MLB, NFL, NBA, etc).
Some earn it and some don't.
It's the makers versus the takers again. Bolshevik Bud is commissioner because he promises more free stuff. And if the Yankees don't like it they can discard the team they've owned as a family for 40 years? How very progressive.
Well now you're sounding like you just staggered away from an Occupy drum circle. You don't care how much certain people are screwed because if they didn't like it they could leave? Lord knows the number of atrocities that could have been defended under such shameful logic.
Well you don't like the Yankees. That's what most of the Budshovism is about really, screwing the Yankees. That's what makes it even more repellent, the idea of the commissioner having a rooting interest.
Golly McCoy, as if I couldn't come up with a rebuttal to "like it or lump it" as a defense. I don't bring up the same issues, you only respond to the same issues.
I notice you haven't commented on, though you quoted above, the curious disconnect between how noted welfare plutocrat David Glass made his massive fortune and how he currently operates the ballclub he purchased for less than $100 million, while receiving upwards of $50 million in free revenue every year. Is his business acumen inadequate to operate the team without welfare? What sort of expanded redistribution would he support for the population at large? I assume he, and his good friend Bud Selig, are as generous with their own money as they demand Young Masters Steinbrenner are with theirs. Has anyone asked them?
Why the recent secrecy around Bolshevik Bud's Billionaire Boondoggle? Isn't he proud of the way he's brought massive redistribtuion from the makers to the takers? There was a time when baseball published some very limited information on who was paying for the continued operation of half the league but even that thin gruel is now hidden under lock and key - and Young Master Hank openly threatened for daring to broach the subject! Not that we have any reason to think Bolshevik Bud is anything less than honest in his dealing with the other owners, secret under-the-table loans from Twins ownership aside.
Funny, for all the crying the glibertarian contingent here does over librul groupthink, it's only the mention of the obvious regarding Bud Selig that truly turns everyone in to card carrying members of the Baseball Pink Factory.
- golf clap -
Let's not pretend the Yankees are Walmart, the Dodgers are Costco, the Angels are Target, and the Marlins operate an 800 square foot co-op staffed by hippies. If that were the case, the Yankees would want to win the competition and drive the others out of business so they can have all the customers to themselves. But that doesn't work in baseball, because you aren't going to get 8 billion in revenue if the only baseball around is watching Derek Jeter take batting practice.
Please remember (in deference to #57) that the idea of a baseball franchise being forced to subsidize its competition is a very new one. Baseball survived for a full century in the absence of forced redistribution of profits. There are things teams can do to suppose the overall health of the sport and the various franchises without creating a permanent welfare program operating in perpetual secrecy at the behest of Bud Selig.
For example, getting back #28, the Yankees, by virtue of their enormous success in marketing themselves as America's Team, are the top-drawing road baseball team year-in and year-out. Their mere presence on an opposing ballfield generates additional revenue in excess of what any other team can deliver. Meanwhile, woebegone teams of eternal failure like the Royals depress revenue when they visit other ballparks. In the spirit of fairness I wouldn't argue that the Yankees deserve to be paid a bonus for their obvious contribution to the attendance and revenues of the teams they visit, nor would I argue that low-drawing teams should be forced to compensate their hosts for depressing ticket sales and subsequently concessions. It's for the good of all that such benefits be distributed evenly, even though the Yankees are clearly losing out.
But this current system of confiscating and redistributing revenue is such an obvious example of graft and cronyism, so clearly prone to abuse, that it's neigh-impossible for it to be supported honestly, which is why the rationales for it have been so numerous and varied since it was forced on Mister Steinbrenner in 1996. What was once argued as a method for allowing all teams to bid on free agents and retain homegrown players has now morphed into a bloated welfare program through which penurious owners simply pocket the forced donations and claim them as their due. Jeffrey Loria makes money hand over fist, appropriating every single Yankee dollar for his own benefit to the point where the Player's Union had to file a formal complaint in 2010, and yet even in the face of such obvious abuse there is no interest in reviewing or exposing the increasingly secretive scheme.
Buying a baseball franchise in a "privileged" market like Kansas City shouldn't be a guarantee of profits for all eternity at the expense of the less well-connected. What is David Glass doing with these several hundred million in unearned revenue, and why hasn't that translated into a better product on the field? What efforts has Glass made to expand his fanbase and exploit new markets, as any experienced capitalist of his credentials would obviously suggest? If you're going to pay these well-heeling plutocratic cronies of the commissioner to sit around and not pay players, nobody can express even the slightly bit of surprise when they do exactly that, and they will, forever, unless the system is reformed.
Would you like to talk about territorial rights? I understand there are some teams, such as the Yankees and Mets or Cubs and White Sox, who share a common territory. I would presume, then, that their contributions to "revenue sharing" would be identical, since the most recent rationale for the scheme is that it compensates other teams for precluding their move to that same shared market. I mean, the goal of Selig's Scheme is not to punish success but merely to even out dissimilarities in geography, or at least that's the current presentation, is it not?
Yes, the rules of revenue sharing apply identically to the Yankees and Mets.
Right, I said "mostly other people's money," not "other people's money," and from the media reports, my description is accurate.
According to the Guggenheim people, they paid $2.15B for the Dodgers in an "all cash" (i.e., no debt) deal. The group has some wealthy people, but it's a small group, and it includes no billionaires, unless Forbes has been way off in their prior reporting.
Mark Walter is the Dodgers' controlling partner, but he's never made a Forbes "richest" list, I haven't seen a single report that puts his net worth even as high as $500 million, and he assuredly didn't invest his full net worth in the Dodgers. Peter Guber is reportedly worth $400 million, but a big chunk of it is tied up in Mandalay Entertainment and the Golden State Warriors, so he couldn't have invested anywhere near $400 million. That leaves Stan Kasten and Magic Johnson, the latter of whom invested somewhere between $0 and $40 million (reports have been highly contradictory) and the former of whom is unlikely to have invested more than $10 million.
Unless there are mega-rich silent partners whose names haven't been disclosed -- and who were OK with someone else being the controlling partner despite investing less money -- the vast majority of the purchase price apparently came from funds invested with Guggenheim Partners (i.e., "other people's money").
Honestly, I just assume so. Do you really believe that there are clauses that say things like "15% of such-and-such revenue from all teams except the Yankees, who must pay 25% of such-and-such revenue"??
Prices may go up when contracts are up. When is the deal up between cable providers and Fox? Secondly the cable providers are fighting back and there is no guarantee the RSN will get what they want. I quoted you the current numbers.
This has been a reported part of the rules from the beginning -- the expense of the stadium comes off the top.
Well they'd never be so crass as to say it that crudely, but that's along the lines of the way it actually works. The Yankees New York is much bigger than the Mets New York, as page 222 shows which big market is a bigger market than the same big market.
Oh, baseball could survive. Take away all revenue sharing and the draft, let the Yankees payroll truly reflect their revenue advantage, and also let them buy up the top amateur talent - say Price, Strasburg, Trout, J Upton, and Harper all start as Yankees. They'd win 110 games per year on average. Though they probably don't win the WS as often as they did under McCarthy or Stengel, if the playoff system remains and adds that element of random to the mix.
At the bottom you'd have a few more teams stuck in the 50-60 win range for long periods of time. My guess is this world does not have the 8 billion dollar annual revenue stream. I don't have proof but I think it's likely that level of competitive balance (without going in the other extreme of introducing parity) is best for the popularity of the sport. And that's best for the Yankees too - their fans will watch more games if the Yankees need to clinch the division in the final week than if the race is over in August. In any case, I'm sure Bud believes this, and any redistribution he's doing is aimed at maximizing the shareholder value for his 30 cartel partners, and not out of any appreciation of Marx.
That would be wonderful for the individual players of course, as I'm sure they've all dreamed of playing for the most famed and historic franchise in all of sport. But of course that wouldn't be fair to the crappy teams who can't get anyone to play for them otherwise.
But you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I've never called for abolishing the draft, which rewards teams strictly on how terrible they are. You can't cry your way into a better draft position. Your longstanding friendship with the commissioner can't get you a #1 pick. There is transparency. I wouldn't mind seeing some tweaks to the draft system (perhaps a weighted lottery, for example) but I'm generally fine with it.
Contrast that to the Budshovist redistribution scheme, which offers free money in perpetuity, disbursed in secret, completely independent of how well or poorly an owner is managing their franchise and catering to their fanbase.
Was Marx not concerned with maximizing the life value of his countrymen, to the admitted disinheritance of the most monied few? I fail to see much difference in intent. Where Bud breaks with Karl is that Bud is brimming with distaste for the poor and impoverished, as evidenced by the most recent restrictions on signing bonuses for amateur players. For his well-heeled cronies no amount of free money constitutes a moral hazard to their enlightened behavior, but for the dusky slobs who learned their trade alongside the sugar cane fields, extreme caution to the moral hazards of windfall isn't just advised, it's mandated.
Huh? Gate-splitting has been a fundamental structural element of professional baseball since its very beginnings.
You're talking about the fee that the cable provider pays to have ESPN in it's package? Fans don't really have much to do with that. It's between Fox Sports and the cable companies. The fan only comes in at the end, after his cable bill is jacked up and he has to decide whether it's still worth having. Though I shouldn't say fan at that point, as people who don't care about baseball will have to make the same decision on keeping or cutting their cable. That is, unless cable companies are forced to allow a-la-cart pricing.
Which would be an interesting change in itself. I've got 15-20 channels worth watching on my TV and about 600 channels of crap. Of course, one man's crap is another man's treasure.
I think Bud sees this as giving the Yankees a smaller slice of a larger pie, and in the end they come out as well or better than if revenue were not shared.
I don't think Marx had any delusions of building a bigger societal pie, and was just focused on it's distribution. He probably would have been shocked to see the extent that his ideas would reduce the size of the pie, he probably thought it would remain more or less the same size.
And I'm sure Bud is so confident of the veracity of such arguments that he didn't mean to threaten Young Master Hank with sanctions for publicly questioning its wisdom, nor keep all of its details so closely guarded and veiled in only the most honest and forthcoming secrecy.
We aren't talking about something as equitable as gate-splitting, as I noted in #58. Indeed, the nonexistant system I dismissed as unfair in that post (where teams pay the Yankees extra for boosting attendance due to their popularity, while poor-drawing teams are forced to pay a penalty to their host) has far more in common with the unbalanced Budshovik scheme than what has ever existed with regards to gate revenues.
You'll note I never rail against the truly equitable aspects of revenue redistribution - the equal shares of the national TV contract, for example. It's the forced compartmentalization, the clear efforts of the league to pick winners and losers, producers and parasites, that galls me. The obvious anti-Yankee bent of the whole scheme, to the point where the Budshoviks would rather penalize players at all levels, professional and amateur, domestic and foreign, rather than let the Yankees offer them a market rate for their talents without penalty, just highlights the shamelessness of it all.
Anti-Yankee? By limiting the bonus money teams were allowed to pay for amateur talents I thought Bud was just showing his distaste for the Pirates.
Normally, these are 5 year deals. The Lakers have set the market rate in Los Angeles at $3.40 a month for 57 games a year. The Dodgers ratings aren't quite as good, but they are selling a ton more inventory (~150 games).
I don't see it that way, although I've heard others make similar arguments. By capping bonus money in an unbalanced way, I believe Bud was trying to funnel more talent at a lower price to the poormouth teams; players (well, their agents) will have a difficult time playing up "signability" issues with the knowledge that each successive slot below their current proposal has less and less money at their disposal, and that each dollar allocated to a top prospect is artificially removed from the pockets of other draftees. The days when risky but potentially elite talents like Joba Chamberlain and Andrew Brackman could fall to the Yankees because the Yankees were willing to pay them like top-10 picks at the #30 slot are over.
The Pirates, meanwhile, can now outbid any other team for the most singular talent in the draft, and as a bonus, can get that talent at an artificially limited and capped price.
I don't see sports channels as anything but a la carte at the end of this deal. The cable companies are bandwidth providers. The sports channels will sell a la carte in Los Angeles and Peoria.
Well, ultimately, this gets passed onto me, the fan ("subscriber"), so really, I'm paying for this, right? If the cable company didn't think they could pass this down the line, they wouldn't agree to it. In the end, what FOX is saying with this bid to the cable companies, "You guys are pricing your product all wrong." This is why the content-producers have fought and will continue to fight a la carte pricing to the death. FOX is banking on a la carte pricing for this deal. It's the only way they have any chance at all of making the math work. Sure, the fan comes in at the end, but we're really the ones financing this deal. Not to be "that guy" but this is one of the issues with Big Media. No one has a vested interest in reporting that this FOX deal, the creation of a 2nd Super Sports Network that NO ONE is really asking for, will end up costing the consumer more money for a product they are already getting for less. That's the problem.
Is your head in the 3x3x3 space, or are you outside of it?
As others have noted, the stadium financing rules apply to all teams and have been part of the revenue sharing system from the beginning. Not at all like Selig capping the TV revenue of one team that gets counted towards revenue sharing. What authority and rationale does Selig advance for this? That it made it easier to sell the Dodgers? Well, any team would be an easier sell if its revenue sharing obligations were reduced.
One team?
Check out the link I posted in #66 and turn to page 121.
The truly equitable system would be to have each team throw half their revenue in a pot, and each get 1/30th of the pot (which is effectively what it was initially, when gates where ~100% of revenue). But that doesn't put downward pressure on salaries, so the owners prefer the current system. If you think the Yankees make less money than they would in a world where the Reds were in Trenton, the Royals were on Long Island, and the Indians were in Queens - well, it's a good thing they don't throw half their revenue in a pot, as it's clearly cracked.
These teams are the ones parading around wearing barrel-and-suspenders costumes despite their insulated fiefdoms and I'm supposed to believe they could waltz into a much more expensive market with a degree of competition for entertainment dollars unlike anything they've ever competed with, and scuttle the most popular sports franchise in the universe? If those poormouth owners really thought they could fatten their coffers by setting up shop in New York they could easily vote to end all territorial rights. But of course they did something even better - they voted themselves partners with the New York teams, guaranteeing themselves a fat cut of the revenues with zero investment in actually generating revenue.
Poor season in the Bronx? #### you, pay me.
Owner lost his shirt in a Wall Street scam? #### you, pay me.
Attendance down? #### you, pay me.
At least when Paulie was running that scam at the restaurant the owner might get a fur coat out of the deal.
The territorial rights system protects the poormouth, fail-prone owners to a far greater degree than the owners of popular, successful franchises like the Yankees. Relocating a team to New York is a huge risk and a massive investment. Without the protection territorial rights offers, the real risk-prone owners would be huddled in places like Miami, dreading the possibility of the Rays or A's relocating and swiping their entire fan base which had been ignored and abused by the Loria regime.
don't shoot the messenger. he has a point; steinbrenner did commit to the team in a way that other owners have not.
YR, i'm not convinced that the system needs to be overhauled -- bottom feeders like loria show that there is a downside to any arrangement. what's the consensus about how other owners are using the revenue sharing spoils? are they all just pocketing the money? the game seems healthy, and an assortment of teams compete most years, don't they?
it's been my impression for quite some time that bud prefers leveraged ownership groups because they can't fight a war on two fronts. that is, they have to get the teams to turn a profit before they can start throwing their weight around when it comes to running MLB. as joe pointed out, the dodgers are going nuts with (mostly) other people's money. so, they have to find a way to win pennants and get fans in the seats. that's where they are concentrating their energy. not a lot left to be bothering bud about his little schemes.
Sure, he usually has points, but delivered them in such a way that makes people actually sympathetic to the opposite of whatever point he is making and often packaged with falsehoods (like the laughable suggestion that territorial rights to some small cities are worth more than rights to NYC).
Well, most teams would not have gotten the same return on investment as he did with the Yankees. Plus Steinbrenner had the good fortune of living for another 40 years or so after he bought the team. There have been many owners who were just as committed to investing in the team but they didn't live long enough to get to see the 90's and 00's. Steinbrenner was no genius. He wasn't some guy who saw what the future was going to be and planned accordingly. He was rich, Yankees were cheap, and he bought them. Ta-da.
Makes it sound way too easy. There were plenty of rich people in 1973 (or whatever the year was) who could have bid 12 million or more for the Yankees if it was generally recognized as a cheap price. They didn't. George did. He made a great investment and deserves credit for that.
No, he wasn't a genius. That became obvious with some of the silly free agent signings. (Dave Collins was a whopper). But he was driven to put a great team on the field, more so than just about every other owner. I admire the passion he had for winning, though to best achieve that he eventually learned he needed to step out of the way a bit.
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