Last season, the @Dodgers took the crown at $4.29 million per regular season home game, based on figures from MLB’s internal gate report shared with Sportico by a non-Dodgers team. Meanwhile, teams at the bottom of the financial table are generating $500,000 per game, including premium seating.
I certainly don’t enjoy spending all my time getting pissed off but I figure I should explain myself a little bit more before domestic opening day. Especially since I just bitched last blog about the Cubs making almost $300M in operating revenue alone.
What I’m talking about is money made from hosting a baseball game. And just through tickets and concessions and merch, the Cubs are 3rd across MLB at $265M per season. So surely that’s reflected in payroll right?
Let’s take a peak:
The Cubs are 12th behind the Angels and just $1.5M ahead of the Arizona Diamondbacks. And quite honestly that’s complete fuckin bullshit inside and out.
The Dodgers and Yankees are spending $175M and $92M more than the Cubs respectively. And they’re doing that with just $80M and $60M more in game revenue respectively.
All that makes for an inexplainable gap from Tom Ricketts in payroll that makes zero sense to Cubs fans.
We know tickets are expensive and beers keep going up and you can hardly keep score or find a decent hot dog. We know going to the game is becoming a once-a-year-if-lucky experience because it’s just not that easy on most Cubs fans.
You’d think there’d be some simultaneous give-and-take from ownership as a result. Especially when almost 50% of your gate revenue is walking into Wrigley Field for the very first time.
So where does all the money go and why doesn’t Tom Ricketts spend it on better baseball players?
Those are the questions I want to see answered if Jed Hoyer is going to openly tell the media that we need to play near-perfect baseball to make the playoffs. I want to know why Tom Ricketts intentionally chooses to have a less talented roster when he has the money and means to make it better.
Is that too much to ask?
I don’t think so but here we are still asking the same question now for the 4th straight season. And if we include player extensions like KB then you can go back even further. And no matter how hard you look you’ll find the same thing: Tom Ricketts being a cheapskate.
Obviously that’s becoming a tired sentiment but I don’t think it’s mainstream enough yet. So I’ll keep bitching until I feel a change in the tides and you’ll just have to deal with it.
But can you blame me when you look at those numbers?
Remember. A beer bat will cost you $38 after tip and tax. And remember that Cam Smith is about to debut for the Astros and that’s because we can’t source premium talent anywhere else, so we had to give up the future to get one year from one guy just to keep fans happy and maybe win a playoff game so Tom can later try to tell us that he’s actually trying to win a championship and saying all of this back legitimately makes me sick to my fucking stomach.
And hopefully you feel the same.
Go Cubs.