Yankees Global Enterprises, the parent company of the New York Yankees, has teamed with the Manchester City Football Club of the English Premier League to bring a new Major League Soccer team to New York. The team will be known as the New York Football Club and will begin action in 2015 MLS season. The New York Times reported that the Yankees have invested as much as $25 million toward the $100 million purchase price.

Manchester City is owned by an investment group led by Sheik Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi. That group has been working with MLS for several years to launch a new New York franchise. The New York Red Bulls play in Harrison, New Jersey.

The Yankees’ involvement in the Manchester City bid came together quickly in the past several weeks. The two sides know each other well as the Yankees’ Legends Hospitality provides services at Manchester City’s home stadium. As Howard Megdal reported for Sports On Earth, the New York Mets were once considered by MLS as the group that would team with a partner for a new New York pro soccer team. The Mets’ financial difficulties made that impossible, which opened the door for the Yankees. Read the rest of this entry »

Some weeks, there are major developments in the business of baseball — like a team signing a new local TV contract. Some weeks, there are little developments on the big developments. My posts tend to focus on the big developments, but that leaves you in the dark on the little developments, unless those little developments become big developments down the road.

Dollars & Sense keeps you up to date on the smaller stories that are important but may not justify a separate post. Today, we have news on attendance through the first quarter of the seasons and expanded in replay in 2014.

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Senator John McCain introduced a bill in the Senate last week which aims to ban local TV blackouts for sporting events played in publicly-financed stadiums. But don’t get too excited baseball fans. The bill is aimed NFL blackout rules, for the most part. MLB blackouts due to the crazy MLB blackout map won’t change under this proposed legislation. The Fox Game of the Week blackouts on Saturdays may be covered, but those will disappear in 2014 anyway under the new Fox/MLB national TV contract.

Dubbed the Television Consumer Fairness Act of 2013, McCain’s bill proposed legislation has three goals:
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We’re only five-plus weeks into the season. Each team has at least 128 games left to play. It’s not too early, though, to talk about players who might be trade targets this summer, as teams fall out of contention. (Is it ever too early, really? This is what we dream up all day long, right?)

Today, we’re going to focus on players with no-trade clauses on teams that may very well be sellers come mid-July. That means starting with the Phillies. Philadelphia has several expensive players who could be quite valuable to contenders down stretch. All of them have no-trade clauses.

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Major League Baseball introduced interleague play in 1997, in part to boost interest in the game after the 1994 season was cut short by the players’ strike. More than 15 years after the first interleague game between the Giants and the Rangers at The Ballpark at Arlington, MLB continues to boast about attendance at interleague games. Last season, the average attendance at interleague games was 34,693, the highest since 2008, when 35,587 fans, on average, attended interleague games.

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Major League Baseball Advanced Media and YouTube announced an expanded partnership on Monday that will result in thousands more hours of baseball highlights that will be available for free on the video site. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the content of the highlights and the timing of their availability on YouTube will continue to be strictly controlled by MLBAM. In other words, fans with dusty VHS collections will continue to receive take-down notices from MLBAM and YouTube if they upload their favorite games or highlights.

Still, the expanded MLB-YouTube agreement is a step in the right direction for baseball fans hungry for free content.

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Some weeks, there are major developments in the business of baseball — like a team signing a new local TV contract. Some weeks, there are little developments on the big developments. My posts tend to focus on the big developments, but that leaves you in the dark on the little developments, unless those little developments become big developments down the road.

This week has been full of little developments in stories I’ve written. Rather than wait until they blossom into big developments — if that ever happens — I’ll run them down here.

StubHub loses fight in California Legislature

On Tuesday,  I wrote about a bill pending in the California State Assembly that would prohibit ticket sellers from placing restrictions on ticket re-sales, like what the Los Angeles Angels have done this season. The Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism and Internet Media had a hearing on the bill Tuesday morning and were none too pleased with its provisions. The Committee gutted the bill, and left in only the provision to outlaw computerized ticket-buying software that brokers often use to scoop up tickets to high-demand events. The Committee is stacked with members from southern California, where the entertainment industry holds tremendous sway, so the bill’s demise isn’t surprising.

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When Major League Baseball renewed its partnership with StubHub last winter, the Yankees and Angels opted out. Instead, each of those teams created its own ticket resale marketplace in partnership with TicketMaster. Like many teams, the Yankees and Angels were unhappy about the MLB/StubHub arrangement, which often results in tickets selling on StubHub for prices well below face value. Those secondary-market sales then undercut a team’s ability to sell additional tickets at face value. The Yankees asked MLB to negotiate a price floor in the new MLB/StubHub contract. When that didn’t happen, the Yankees and Angels went their own way with the TicketMaster Ticket Exchange.

What has that meant for fans holding Yankees and Angels tickets?

If you purchase Yankees tickets and you want to sell your tickets and transfer them electronically, you must do so using the team’s Ticket Exchange. StubHub isn’t authorized by the Yankees to allow the print-at-home option for ticket buyers.

If you purchase Angels tickets and want to to sell your tickets and transfer them in any manner, you must do so using the team’s Ticket Exchange. According to the Angels, the team can void any ticket “should any person sell or offer this ticket for resale,” and resale in any forum other than on the team-authorized Ticketmaster site “is prohibited.”

Note: As several readers have noted, it appears you can download and print tickets from StubHub for Yankees and Angels games within 48 hours of the game’s start time. Beyond 48 hours, StubHub lists UPS as the only delivery option.

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In a deal announced on Tuesday, the Seattle Mariners will become the majority stakeholder in ROOT Sports Northwest, the regional sports network (RSN) owned by DirecTV. ROOT Sports NW currently broadcasts Mariners games under a 1o-year rights fee contract that pays the Mariners $45 million per year. That agreement gave the Mariners an opt-out clause after the 2015 season, which led many to speculate that the team would look to match the mega deals recently struck by their American League West rivals.

In 2011, the Angels inked a new local TV deal with regional sports network Fox Sports West, valued at $2.5 billion over 17 years, plus a 25% equity stake in the RSN. The Texas Rangers kicked off this new frenzy in late 2010 with its 20-year/$1.7 billion deal with Fox Sports Southwest. After the Angels’ new deal, the Houston Astros cashed in, joining with the Houston Rockets to create a new RSN with Comcast, called Comcast SportsNet Houston. The Astros will receive $80 million a year for the next 20 years, plus income generated from its 45% equity stake.

Instead, the Mariners are headed in a different and somewhat surprising direction. The new deal — estimated by Forbes at $2 billion over 17 years — will give the Mariners broader control over the RSN’s programming. But that control may come with some financial uncertainty.

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Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts announced at a Monday morning press conference that an agreement had been reached on a framework to renovate Wrigley Field. The Ricketts family plans to spend $500 million in private funds to renovate and modernize the nearly 100-year-old ballpark, develop a new hotel across from Wrigley, and make myriad pedestrian, traffic, and other improvements to the Wrigleyville neighborhood.

The framework is the result of months of negotiations among the Cubs and the Ricketts family, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, Chicago Alderman Tom Tunney, and Wrigleyville residents, and, according to Tom Ricketts, has the backing of Emmanuel and Tunney. Getting the support of the mayor and the local alderman was critical, as the plan must now proceed through Chicago’s Planned Development process, and be voted on by the Landmarks Commission and City Council.

The details are similar to those released by the Cubs in January, when the Ricketts family dropped their request for public funds and announced their intent to privately-finance the much-needed renovation. The hook for the Ricketts family’s half a billion dollar investment: changes to Chicago ordinances that restrict the quantity and type of advertising at Wrigley and the number of Cubs night games. In other words, if the City gives the Ricketts the leeway to operate Wrigley Field profitably, then the Ricketts will modernize the landmark ballpark and revitalize the neighborhood.

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Late Thursday night, the New York Times reported that Major League Baseball purchased documents from a former employee of Biogenesis, the Miami anti-aging clinic at the center of MLB’s investigation into performance-enhancing drugs. The Times also reported that a player linked to the clinic by recent news stories had also purchased documents from a former — but perhaps different — Biogenesis employee. The player allegedly bought the documents with the intent to destroy them.

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There’s nothing terribly surprising about the headline. The Marlins finished in last place in the National League East last season. They traded all of the marquee players over the winter, save for superstar Giancarlo Stanton, who is under team control until after the 2016 season. The team threatened to sue season-ticket holders who refused to pay their ticket invoice in a dispute over whether their view was obstructed. And a week before the season started, the Marlins had teamed with Groupon to offer two-for-the-price-of-one tickets for opening night against the Braves. Then the Marlins started the season on the road with a 1-5 record.

Still, when my colleague Jeff Sullivan snapped this photo just as the opening night was getting underway at Marlins Park, I was, well, surprised.

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Baseball’s season-ticket holders will be able to take in a game this year for about the same cost as last season. They’ll also enjoy a hot dog, a beer, a soda, a program and a cap for 2012 prices — more or less. But long-time fans of the Nationals, Tigers, Giants, Angels and Rangers have had to dig deeper into their pockets. With those teams, season-ticket holders saw ticket price increases of more than 10%. The Mariners, Diamondbacks and Pirates also raised their prices for season-ticket holders by at least 7%. On the flip side, the White Sox, Royals and Mets lowered non-premium seats by 7% or more.

The ticket price information comes courtesy of Fan Cost Experience, which released its annual ticket price survey this week. The site reports on the “average ticket price” for each team — which it defines as “a weighted average of season-ticket prices for general seating categories, determined by factoring the tickets in each price range as a percentage of the total number of seats in each venue.”  Across the league, the average ticket price in 2013 is $27.48, a mere 1% increase over last season.

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Late on March 21, there were a flurry of tweets and other bits of news suggesting that Major League Baseball was about to file a lawsuit against Biogenesis, the Miami “age and wellness” clinic linked to high-profile ballplayers and performance enhancing drugs. The interwebs were alive with speculation on the claims MLB would make; there were even rumors that MLB would charge Biogenesis was part of a “RICO” conspriacy. “RICO” is the acronym for the federal law known as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Practice Act, or the law used to bring down the mob.

By mid-morning on March 22, we had some answers. MLB filed a complaint in Florida state court charging Biogenesis, clinic director Anthony Bosch and others clinic associates with intentionally and wrongfully interfering with MLB’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program  – a part of the collective bargaining agreement between MLB and MLBPA — by inducing certain players to purchase, use and distribute performance enhancing substances (PES). MLB claimed the Biogenesis defendants knew of MLB’s prohibition on PES from Manny Ramirez’s 50-game suspension — if not from other sources — as Biogenesis allegedly supplied Ramirez with Human Clorionic Gonadotropin, a banned substance. According to MLB, Biogenesis ignored that information and continued to supply players with prohibited PES. MLB claimed Biogenesis’ action caused the league to suffer monetary and other damages, including the loss of goodwill, revenue, and profits and harm to its reputation.

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Last week, ESPN’s Adam Rubin reported that Major League Baseball owners were considering a proposal to “eliminate pensions” of non-union personnel — everyone from scouts to  secretaries who work in the general manager’s office. The story included a quote from MLB executive vice president Rob Manfred who said, essentially, that MLB wasn’t eliminating pensions entirely, but amending MLB’s program to allow teams “more flexibility.”

The story led to a great deal of hue and cry, and perhaps rightfully so: Baseball isn’t a distressed industry. Quite the contrary. As Forbes reported Wednesday, the average MLB team gained 23% in value over the last year, the result of a new $12.4 billion dollar national TV contract, skyrocketing local TV contracts and the revenues generated hand-over-fist by MLB Advanced Media. Manfred wasn’t willing to admit that certain owners are simply looking to spend less money on retirement benefits going forward — even in this era of immense prosperity in baseball — but it’s hard to draw a different conclusion.

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Unless you make it a habit to read FanGraphs only on Fridays (and if you do, what’s up with that?), you’ve likely read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series. So you know the score. We’re taking a look at team financial health as we head into the 2013 season. You also the know which teams are in the top tier, because you’re smart and can figure that out for yourself. But we’ve come this far, so we’re going to complete the exercise. We’re nothing if not true to our word.

The top tier teams, in alphabetical order by team name.

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As we explained yesterday in Part 1 of the series, we’re looking at the financial health of all thirty major league teams. The focus is on attendance, local TV contracts, and estimated 2013 payroll. We’re not ranking the teams one to thirty because we lack the kind of detailed information that would make such a ranking meaningful. We do, however, have enough information to paint with broad strokes, so as part of our attempt to give an overview of where each team stands as 2013 begins, we’ll look at their access to monetary resources for the upcoming season.

We’ve grouped the teams in tiers. Today we look at the ten teams in the middle.

In alphabetical order, by team name:

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Here on the site, we’re currently doing a series called the Positional Power Rankings, going through each team’s strengths and weaknesses at each spot on the field. Well, this is also a positional power ranking of sorts. The position is each team’s financial health. The ranking? More like placing the teams in tiers: the teams most constrained by their finances; the teams in the middle; and the most financially-successful teams.

We can’t get to the same level of precision on team finances because we have to rely on publicly-available information that we haven’t generated, and that publicly-available information lacks the kind of details we’d need to really flesh out the small differences between franchises in the same tiers. However, we do have enough information to paint with broad strokes, so as part of our attempt to give an overview of where each team stands as 2013 begins, we’ll look at their access to monetary resources for the upcoming season.

Today we begin our look at the financial health of all thirty major-league teams, starting with the bottom ten. Tomorrow we will look at the middle ten and on Friday the top ten. We will focus on ticket-generated revenue (attendance), local TV revenue, and player payroll. That leaves some holes, to be sure, particularly where team owners are carrying significant debt. Some of that information is publicly-available, but not all, and even the publicly-available information may not accurate or verifiable. This isn’t precise, but hopefully, it’s still informative.

With those caveats, let’s begin.

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Bill James headlined the second annual SABR Analytics Conference in Phoenix last weekend. Brian Kenny from MLB Network’s Clubhouse Confidential acted as a roving emcee of sorts.  Joe Posnanski was there. Rob Neyer was there. And our own Dave Cameron and David Appelman were there. The three days of sessions led to lively discussions about WAR and knuckleball academies and the mythical analytics-scouting divide.

But this year’s conference wasn’t limited to questions about how best to measure and project on-the-field performance. Analytics have moved to the business side of the front office. And it’s your off-the-field performance in watching, listening to, and attending ballgames that is now the subject of intense study. Sports marketing isn’t new but the techniques used to measure fans, create new ones, and motivate both groups to purchase tickets and merchandise have become much more sophisiticated.

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On Tuesday, Fox Sports Media Group announced the creation of a new multi-sports cable network with programming beginning on August 17. The new network — named Fox Sports 1 — is a re-branding of the Fox-owned Speed Network. Speed is already in 90 million homes through myriad cable and satellite operators, so Fox Sports 1 will launch with a substantial potential audience. Industry experts are calling it the biggest challenge yet to ESPN’s sports-programming dominance.

Starting in 2014, much of Fox’s baseball programming will shift from the network TV channel to Fox Sports 1. Under the new national TV contracts MLB signed with Fox Sports, ESPN and TBS last summer, Fox will get a bigger piece of the baseball-on-TV pie. And that bigger piece will no longer be available for free.

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