That’s
bottom-line value of the contract recently signed by Shohei Ohtani.
Seven
hundred million dollars, from the Los Angeles Dodgers, for playing
baseball. And yes, playing baseball extraordinarily well. (As
in, just award him the MVP every year because if he’s healthy
it isn’t close extraordinarily well.) Breaks down to seventy million
per season over the length of its ten years.
For
most of us, the reaction to that is simple. It’s ridiculous. For
a good number of us, possibly even obscene. For the player and
the team, however, you could likely argue quite well that both
sides came out of this with incredibly decent results.
As
a starting point, let’s say this: It’s complicated.
Doesn’t
matter where we might take our conversation. Doesn’t matter what
aspects of it we explore. It’s complicated.
Example?
Sure.
Several
reports say that Ohtani will be paid two million per season for
the ten years. The remaining six-hundred-eighty million will be
deferred, without interest, until payments begin in about ten
years (between 2034 and 2043).
Even
beyond the deferred money, this contract is, in many ways, a new
design of compensation for a professional athlete. (And, with
the typing of six-hundred-eighty, we’re switching over to numbers
instead of spelling it all out again and again.)
Another
example? That interest free loan of sorts, which undoubtedly assisted
Ohtani in getting the contract value raised to even greater heights,
further assists many outlets as reporting that the deal is extremely
team friendly.
(Let’s
close our eyes, allow the breeze to carry past us for a few seconds,
take a cleansing breath, exhale and summarize that with the details
offered once again.)
Arriving
at $70 million per season, Ohtani’s $700 million deal is being
reported as extremely team friendly. As a side note, the previous
largest contract was Ohtani’s former teammate, Mike Trout, at
426.5 million.
As
I said, it’s complicated.
Wait.
ANOTHER example? Ok. There are many places that peg Ohtani’s annual
compensation from endorsements at roughly $50 million. So, you
don’t have to worry about how he’s going to survive on his $2
million salary. He’s fine. Today and for the future.
The
craziest part, perhaps, of all of this is how little we get as
fans. And that is the complicated material I’d like to consider
more deeply.
See,
there is no one to really applaud or be happy for when it comes
to money and thoughts of owners, clubs, players and the sport.
At least not when we are talking about free agent contracts for
the better players. These are not the athletes with perhaps three
to six years of playing for their professional career, mostly
in the minor leagues, working to get as much as they can. These
are the exceptional talents making millions each season.
But…
hold on, complicated… if the money doesn’t go to the Ohtanis of
the sport, there is no guarantee it gets spent at all. All those
clubs in the running for signing him this offseason… just to name
some, the Angels, Blue Jays and Giants were noted as three of
the others chasing him… are not going to turn around and offer
another player $700 million for ten years. Almost certainly, they
will pursue other players, and probably spend millions—strike
that, probably spend hundreds of millions—creating
their roster. I think it’s safe to say though, this offseason,
they will not spend Ohtani level money. In fact, they likely won’t
spend that level of money on all of their offseason moves combined.
So,
if a team was going to spend just shy of three-quarters of a billion
dollars on one player, and doesn’t sign that player, we arrive
at a question. A $700 million question. They had the money to
spend on their roster. They didn’t spend that money on their roster.
Where will that money end up?
Well,
of course. Lower ticket prices. That’s one thing the team can
do. More affordable parking and concessions and team apparel for
the fans attending games. That’ll be nice when they use the monies
saved to help out the fans. Better accessibility to regular season
broadcasts. They’ll do all of this, of course. All of this and
more, that in reality you and I know isn’t happening.
It’s
hard to get mad at the players getting paid stratospherically
high salaries when that money is most definitely on the table.
But it’s a system that we, as fans, have actually in many ways
supported. We watch the games. We buy the food and the beverages
and the caps and the shirts. We support the sponsors.
Someone
is going to get paid the money. Someone—or, more accurately… from
agents to lawyers to accounting specialists to more involved…
someones, plural—is going to figure out how to structure the paying
of that money. As of today, with the business model that exists,
we’re looking in the wrong direction to question how much money
folks in the business are making.
What
we should be wondering about, at least far more often than we
do, is why the model is set up the way it is. Why are the minor
leagues, in so many ways, getting so little security? Why are
we, the audience… the fans… the loyal and the dedicated… seeing
so many costs rise?
Last
year, the 2023 season, the Dodgers were reported to be around
3.8 million in attendance for the regular season. If we could,
theoretically, since realistically isn’t that simple or even possible…
cut Ohtani’s contract in half—$35 million instead of $70 million—shift
the money from player salary to ticket prices, each of those attendees
would have paid about $10 less for their ticket.
Would
that $10 matter?
Well,
for the lowest prices, it would mean a bit.
But
consider that most reports say a ticket to a Dodgers home game
averaged just over $170. And, next season, there are already articles
out saying those averages will shift to $295 per ticket.
In
fairness, the Dodgers did spend that money.
It’s
complicated.