April 17, 2008
Forbes Valuations
The Forbes ratings came out last night, and baseball looks like it's in pretty good shape. Only three teams, the Yankees, Red Sox and Blue Jays are losing money via operations. Things are really upside down, since the biggest profits accrue to the Marlins and Nationals. The winners lose and the losers win. What a great sport!
Posted by David Pinto at
08:10 PM
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Management
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So shouldn't the Marlins be subsidizing the Yankees, instead of vice versa?
Ted Rogers makes a lot more off the Jays than these numbers show. He also owns the Rogers Centre and the network the Jays are primarily broadcast on. Pretty much all the profit has been reinvested in player salaries or in stadium improvements.
I think the luxury tax should be put into drug program development and charitable exercises and not paid to reward poor performance.
MLB audited economic data are not truly accurate, as they are not publicly held companies and the standards they are held to are lower than Enron or Global Crossing.
Add the true value of the YES and NESN network contracts in the open market, they would show a substantial profit.
Ah the beauty of using related party transactions to conceal real earnings and pay less in revenue sharing.
Since these are private operations, Forbes can only estimate. It's not hard to believe that the clubs are making money, though, because the labor negotiations went so easy last time. Hardly anybody wants to rock the boat right now. And baseball bigwigs have been crowing about soon overtaking the NFL in total revenue.
It would be interesting to see hard numbers on YES and NESN. My guess is that the networks are profitable but not exactly the gold mines that their parent organizations would like us to believe. After all, the prospect of a spinoff of the networks helps to increase the valuations of the Yankees and Red Sox.