Seattle Mariners: The high price to bring back MLB in 2020
Kyle Seager, Seattle Mariners (photo by Dinur via Flickr)
Major League Baseball has set a date to begin the season and Seattle Mariners fans are excited. The events that led to this point may be the sport’s undoing.
In four weeks, Major League Baseball with play games that count, for the first time since October 2019. Add another six weeks or so to that tally for the Emerald City’s team. Sometime around July 24, the Seattle Mariners will storm out of their dugout, to the cheers of less than 100 people in attendance.
The M’s will begin their chase for one of five playoff positions in the American League. The season will be a 60 game free for all that takes place over two months. The events that transpired to make the mini-season happen also has the potential to destroy the sport so many love.
Even though Mitch Haniger, J.P. Crawford, and Dee Gordon will take the field at T-Mobile Park, Seattle Mariners fans will have to watch their team play on television, due to COVID 19 restrictions and social distancing. It’s a bit ironic that the device used to bring the game back into people’s homes, is also the thing that a) almost blew it up less than a month ago, and b) may still be its downfall.
TV Money is so important to Major League Baseball that despite the league battling a labor war, they saw fit to negotiate a $1B deal with Turner Sports to broadcast the playoffs. The contract certainly set off the players union.
They asked how the owners can cry poor and ask for pay cuts when they just got so much money. MLB owners, for their part, said that the Players Association missed the larger picture. Players didn’t understand that much of team revenue comes from game day related purchases (tickets, parking, souvenirs, food, etc.).
Currently, the level of animosity between the league and union has dropped below the point of nuclear destruction. Both sides seem ready to pick up their weapons at any second and resume the conflict. It will get worse as the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires at the end of the 2021 season.
The opposing factions may find that their bargaining power has been sharply curtailed by the stakeholders who have been taken for granted, the fans. A group that has had enough of millionaires and billionaires fighting over percentage points.
Not too long ago, fans could vote with their dollars about their team. So many corporate dollars have flowed into all sports that the action of one fan or a small group of fans not attending live events is barely noticeable.
Fans can show their power
Ah, but the dynamic has changed, and both MLB and the MLBPA have missed it. They are controlled by one finger. Since there will be little to no live attendance, fans will watch their respective squads play on television. Baseball has built an entire house of cards on a shaky foundation of advertising dollars.
Seattle Mariners fans love their team. They, like fans of every other team, will watch at first. Competition will be fierce from those other sports that have either delayed their respective seasons or are starting a new one in the fall. The labor war of words very well may intensify again in the next 16 months. All fans need to do is push a button on the tv remote and register their displeasure.
If ratings take a significant drop, so does advertising money. When advertising money dries up, broadcast rights fees paid to MLB do as well. Then there is a smaller pie for the sides to fight over. Everybody loses because owners and players yelled at each other so loudly that their supporters tuned them out.
Before the two sides decided to continue their holy war, they may want to take into consideration that someone else may settle their fight for them. All it would take is enough people doing something as easy as changing a channel. If Rob Manfred and Tony Clark haven’t figured this out yet, then people who have are the ones who should take over negotiations.