Btw, "Biggest Deal in Sports History" is a bit disingenuous. Messi's (and Ronaldo's) deal was for nearly the same amount for half the years. Sorry for the disingenuous headline (just faithfully...
Btw, "Biggest Deal in Sports History" is a bit disingenuous. Messi's (and Ronaldo's) deal was for nearly the same amount for half the years. Sorry for the disingenuous headline (just faithfully copied the actual story headline when I saw it).
I don't think it's a bad title because it's about absolute value, and not value per year of contract. But technically people buy whole teams, so if I wanted to be pedantic there were many sports...
I don't think it's a bad title because it's about absolute value, and not value per year of contract.
An absolutely bonkers amount of money, but with how much of the money is deferred, the Dodgers just bought themselves a few world series, I bet. I don't think you can really put a price on the GOAT.
An absolutely bonkers amount of money, but with how much of the money is deferred, the Dodgers just bought themselves a few world series, I bet. I don't think you can really put a price on the GOAT.
The revenue the team makes from just outside viewership in Japan makes the deal make more sense. Bonkers, yes. But we won't see this generational talent again.
The revenue the team makes from just outside viewership in Japan makes the deal make more sense. Bonkers, yes. But we won't see this generational talent again.
The Dodgers won't make all that much revenue from Japanese viewership. Merchandise sales are split between all teams equally, and overseas TV contracts go to MLB, not the Dodgers. The only...
The Dodgers won't make all that much revenue from Japanese viewership.
Merchandise sales are split between all teams equally, and overseas TV contracts go to MLB, not the Dodgers.
The only significant Japanese revenue they stand to gain is from Japanese companies buying in-stadium ads.
For all the talk about financial disparity, MLB has a structure which disperses revenues outside of a team's local market rather equally, even when they're disproportionately driven by a single club.
I think we all expected a record breaking deal, but I don't think anyone expected this. I'm sure even if he is hurt or doesn't play to expectation throughout the contract, the marketability alone...
I think we all expected a record breaking deal, but I don't think anyone expected this. I'm sure even if he is hurt or doesn't play to expectation throughout the contract, the marketability alone is well worth it.
It was rumoured that Rogers Communications, the telecom company that owns the Blue Jays, were willing to give up their NHL broadcasting rights to write a check for Ohtani. Rogers has two years...
It was rumoured that Rogers Communications, the telecom company that owns the Blue Jays, were willing to give up their NHL broadcasting rights to write a check for Ohtani.
Rogers has two years left on a 10-year, $500 million broadcast deal with the NHL which has apparently been a disaster. Apparently Rogers would have shifted pretty much all of the focus on their sports channels to the Jays and Ohtani had they managed to sign him.
At least they would have stopped talking about the Leafs.
Holy hell, he will only be making 2 million a year. 68 of the 70 million per year he will be payed is deferred until after the contract. It will still be ~46m aav for luxury tax purposes. So in...
So in those 10 years, he'll only make 20 of the 700 million. This being Ohtani's idea and apparently offered to every team he negotiated with. He gets to have the title of biggest contract ever, while giving his team MASSIVE financial flexibility to win (especially a team like the Dodgers).
Feels like something I would do in OOTP when I used to play that lol
Edit: Going off the luxury tax numbers, that would equate the "real" value of the deal at $460 million
It should be noted, the Dodgers still have to put like around 40m/yr in an escrow account to pay out the rest of the deal later. So great payroll flexibility, the escrow can gain interest, but...
It should be noted, the Dodgers still have to put like around 40m/yr in an escrow account to pay out the rest of the deal later. So great payroll flexibility, the escrow can gain interest, but there's still an additional 40m or so per year they need to come up with for that escrow.
I'm not super familiar with American sports, so I had no idea there was this much money in baseball. Is it popular anywhere else except North America and Japan?
I'm not super familiar with American sports, so I had no idea there was this much money in baseball. Is it popular anywhere else except North America and Japan?
Baseball is pretty popular in Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela, as well as a few other countries in the Caribbean, and South/Central America, largely because of huge investments in training...
Is it popular anywhere else except North America and Japan?
Baseball is pretty popular in Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela, as well as a few other countries in the Caribbean, and South/Central America, largely because of huge investments in training partnerships and baseball academies in those countries, which is also why so many MLB players come from there. And besides Japan, South Korea, Philippines, and Taiwan also have reasonably large baseball audiences as well due to strong historic/diplomatic/cultural ties with America.
Edit: Apparently Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and a few other countries around the world (including China) also have pretty decent sized baseball audiences too, according to FiveThirtyEight.
The baseball season is 162 games long so they have a lot of opportunities to make money. Many teams sell over 3 million tickets a year and that's before we even talk about TV money.
The baseball season is 162 games long so they have a lot of opportunities to make money. Many teams sell over 3 million tickets a year and that's before we even talk about TV money.
Holy shit. I just looked it up and it seems they play all of those games in just six months too, so almost a game every day. How in the world do they prevent injuries with such a brutal schedule?...
Holy shit. I just looked it up and it seems they play all of those games in just six months too, so almost a game every day. How in the world do they prevent injuries with such a brutal schedule? I realize it's not as much of a contact heavy game as e.g. football (either variety), but still. Seems like it must make each individual match less special, too, if they're happening literally every day for half of the year.
First, American sports play games (as you correctly wrote at the start), not matches. It's not really a big deal, but it just feels so wrong to see someone refer to a "baseball match." And you're...
First, American sports play games (as you correctly wrote at the start), not matches. It's not really a big deal, but it just feels so wrong to see someone refer to a "baseball match." And you're right, each individual game isn't necessarily super important, but most teams that are in contention remain within a few wins of each other throughout the season so there's often jockeying for position every day of the season.
Most of a baseball game is just standing around. Half the time, you're standing or sitting on the sidelines (in your dugout or bullpen) and the players in the field are just standing around the vast majority of their time when they are on the field. Catchers do have to squat almost the whole time they're on the field, so they can get creaky knees, but you can still play with creaky knees.
It's the pitchers who have the highest risk of injury because they're throwing the ball 80-100+ miles per hour every single pitch. But the starting pitchers only start 1/5 games and the backup (relief) pitchers only pitch for a small portion of a game--if they pitch at all.
There are certainly opportunities for collisions both in the field and when the players are running the bases, but situational awareness (and announcing who is going to catch a ball) prevent almost all collisions in the field, and base running collisions are rare. Plus, you have to be great to get on base even 37% of the time (that on-base percentage is about as common as players getting on base specifically by hitting the ball 30% of the time--a .300 batting average, which is the generic standard for a great batter).
There just aren't as many opportunities for injuries as in other sports. I think it's much more impressive that basketball and hockey players play 82 games per season.
But baseball is a very interesting sport, even if literally nothing is happening 90% of the time during a game. There are a lot of weird quirks and even if you don't enjoy actually watching the sport, analyzing it can be really interesting. There are so many quirks and interesting statistics. But when you do watch, anything could happen on any play. While that usually means that nothing happens on any given pitch, something is going to happen each time you have a new batter, which means that, IMO, it can be the most stressful, dramatic sport in the world at its peak. Other sports obviously have more drama throughout the rest of the game. But a World Series game 7 in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded and a full count is unlike anything any other sport has to offer, IMO. Not that other sports don't get hugely dramatic, but knowing that everything could change literally within a quarter second of action is incredibly stressful. And the fact that the most likely result of the next pitch is that nothing changes and we have to repeat the same stressful situation one-on-one test of mettle all over again just ratchets up the stress even higher.
Baseball is definitely less about the individual match vs the aggregate (though ESPN and such will try to sell otherwise). It does not have the "must watch every game" appeal that something like...
Baseball is definitely less about the individual match vs the aggregate (though ESPN and such will try to sell otherwise). It does not have the "must watch every game" appeal that something like the NFL has, but instead is more the "ol' reliable" of being on every night (and making for something that's great to play in the background). It's what is great about baseball season: I know, no matter what, I got something I can watch at 7pm. Maybe there's something else I'd rather watch, but worse case there will be a game happening.
As far as injuries, it's not only that there's limited contact: the sport itself has limited action to begin with. You could play on defense and never have the ball hit your way in a game, for example (there's also the position of designated hitter, which does not play defense at all). Tack on not getting on base while on offense and you just played a game of barely doing anything.
The most taxing position (and most injury prone) is pitchers, and they do NOT play every day because of that - your starting pitchers play once every 5 days (you have a "rotation" of 5 starting pitchers to be able to do so), and it's rare for a relief pitchers to pitch in more than 2 games in a row without a rest day. Pitchers used to throw significantly much more in the past - but 1) pitchers throw significantly harder now and 2) players make significantly more money, and so teams want to protect their investments by not overworking them.
They don't prevent injuries per se, but the season is a long grind (and playoffs are too) so there is definitely consideration for these factors when planning the day-to-day roster. To answer your...
They don't prevent injuries per se, but the season is a long grind (and playoffs are too) so there is definitely consideration for these factors when planning the day-to-day roster.
To answer your other question, baseball is very popular in the Central American countries as well as the Near East countries (to borrow United States parlance).
It's a philosophical game with long periods of boredom strategic maneuvering punctuated by moments of intense excitement.
In a way it's like a cricket match condensed down to one day for each game, if that helps. It's like cricket match if each game were required to finish in one session. Each "series" (like a cricket match) is 3-7 games against the other team depending on the circumstances, but each game in the series must be completed (in one session) in full before the next can start.
Btw, "Biggest Deal in Sports History" is a bit disingenuous. Messi's (and Ronaldo's) deal was for nearly the same amount for half the years. Sorry for the disingenuous headline (just faithfully copied the actual story headline when I saw it).
I don't think it's a bad title because it's about absolute value, and not value per year of contract.
But technically people buy whole teams, so if I wanted to be pedantic there were many sports deals above that :P
An absolutely bonkers amount of money, but with how much of the money is deferred, the Dodgers just bought themselves a few world series, I bet. I don't think you can really put a price on the GOAT.
The revenue the team makes from just outside viewership in Japan makes the deal make more sense. Bonkers, yes. But we won't see this generational talent again.
The Dodgers won't make all that much revenue from Japanese viewership.
Merchandise sales are split between all teams equally, and overseas TV contracts go to MLB, not the Dodgers.
The only significant Japanese revenue they stand to gain is from Japanese companies buying in-stadium ads.
For all the talk about financial disparity, MLB has a structure which disperses revenues outside of a team's local market rather equally, even when they're disproportionately driven by a single club.
That's a hell of a deal. I'm happy for him; hope he can stay healthy.
I think we all expected a record breaking deal, but I don't think anyone expected this. I'm sure even if he is hurt or doesn't play to expectation throughout the contract, the marketability alone is well worth it.
If you work the deferrals back to the present value then it comes out to about $460m, which is pretty much exactly what everyone expected him to get.
It was rumoured that Rogers Communications, the telecom company that owns the Blue Jays, were willing to give up their NHL broadcasting rights to write a check for Ohtani.
Rogers has two years left on a 10-year, $500 million broadcast deal with the NHL which has apparently been a disaster. Apparently Rogers would have shifted pretty much all of the focus on their sports channels to the Jays and Ohtani had they managed to sign him.
At least they would have stopped talking about the Leafs.
Holy hell, he will only be making 2 million a year. 68 of the 70 million per year he will be payed is deferred until after the contract. It will still be ~46m aav for luxury tax purposes.
So in those 10 years, he'll only make 20 of the 700 million. This being Ohtani's idea and apparently offered to every team he negotiated with. He gets to have the title of biggest contract ever, while giving his team MASSIVE financial flexibility to win (especially a team like the Dodgers).
Feels like something I would do in OOTP when I used to play that lol
Edit: Going off the luxury tax numbers, that would equate the "real" value of the deal at $460 million
It should be noted, the Dodgers still have to put like around 40m/yr in an escrow account to pay out the rest of the deal later. So great payroll flexibility, the escrow can gain interest, but there's still an additional 40m or so per year they need to come up with for that escrow.
I'm not super familiar with American sports, so I had no idea there was this much money in baseball. Is it popular anywhere else except North America and Japan?
Baseball is pretty popular in Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela, as well as a few other countries in the Caribbean, and South/Central America, largely because of huge investments in training partnerships and baseball academies in those countries, which is also why so many MLB players come from there. And besides Japan, South Korea, Philippines, and Taiwan also have reasonably large baseball audiences as well due to strong historic/diplomatic/cultural ties with America.
Edit: Apparently Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and a few other countries around the world (including China) also have pretty decent sized baseball audiences too, according to FiveThirtyEight.
p.s. A few months ago I posted a related video from Vox that you might find interesting:
Why so many baseball players are Dominican
The baseball season is 162 games long so they have a lot of opportunities to make money. Many teams sell over 3 million tickets a year and that's before we even talk about TV money.
Holy shit. I just looked it up and it seems they play all of those games in just six months too, so almost a game every day. How in the world do they prevent injuries with such a brutal schedule? I realize it's not as much of a contact heavy game as e.g. football (either variety), but still. Seems like it must make each individual match less special, too, if they're happening literally every day for half of the year.
First, American sports play games (as you correctly wrote at the start), not matches. It's not really a big deal, but it just feels so wrong to see someone refer to a "baseball match." And you're right, each individual game isn't necessarily super important, but most teams that are in contention remain within a few wins of each other throughout the season so there's often jockeying for position every day of the season.
Most of a baseball game is just standing around. Half the time, you're standing or sitting on the sidelines (in your dugout or bullpen) and the players in the field are just standing around the vast majority of their time when they are on the field. Catchers do have to squat almost the whole time they're on the field, so they can get creaky knees, but you can still play with creaky knees.
It's the pitchers who have the highest risk of injury because they're throwing the ball 80-100+ miles per hour every single pitch. But the starting pitchers only start 1/5 games and the backup (relief) pitchers only pitch for a small portion of a game--if they pitch at all.
There are certainly opportunities for collisions both in the field and when the players are running the bases, but situational awareness (and announcing who is going to catch a ball) prevent almost all collisions in the field, and base running collisions are rare. Plus, you have to be great to get on base even 37% of the time (that on-base percentage is about as common as players getting on base specifically by hitting the ball 30% of the time--a .300 batting average, which is the generic standard for a great batter).
There just aren't as many opportunities for injuries as in other sports. I think it's much more impressive that basketball and hockey players play 82 games per season.
But baseball is a very interesting sport, even if literally nothing is happening 90% of the time during a game. There are a lot of weird quirks and even if you don't enjoy actually watching the sport, analyzing it can be really interesting. There are so many quirks and interesting statistics. But when you do watch, anything could happen on any play. While that usually means that nothing happens on any given pitch, something is going to happen each time you have a new batter, which means that, IMO, it can be the most stressful, dramatic sport in the world at its peak. Other sports obviously have more drama throughout the rest of the game. But a World Series game 7 in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded and a full count is unlike anything any other sport has to offer, IMO. Not that other sports don't get hugely dramatic, but knowing that everything could change literally within a quarter second of action is incredibly stressful. And the fact that the most likely result of the next pitch is that nothing changes and we have to repeat the same stressful situation one-on-one test of mettle all over again just ratchets up the stress even higher.
Baseball is definitely less about the individual match vs the aggregate (though ESPN and such will try to sell otherwise). It does not have the "must watch every game" appeal that something like the NFL has, but instead is more the "ol' reliable" of being on every night (and making for something that's great to play in the background). It's what is great about baseball season: I know, no matter what, I got something I can watch at 7pm. Maybe there's something else I'd rather watch, but worse case there will be a game happening.
As far as injuries, it's not only that there's limited contact: the sport itself has limited action to begin with. You could play on defense and never have the ball hit your way in a game, for example (there's also the position of designated hitter, which does not play defense at all). Tack on not getting on base while on offense and you just played a game of barely doing anything.
The most taxing position (and most injury prone) is pitchers, and they do NOT play every day because of that - your starting pitchers play once every 5 days (you have a "rotation" of 5 starting pitchers to be able to do so), and it's rare for a relief pitchers to pitch in more than 2 games in a row without a rest day. Pitchers used to throw significantly much more in the past - but 1) pitchers throw significantly harder now and 2) players make significantly more money, and so teams want to protect their investments by not overworking them.
They don't prevent injuries per se, but the season is a long grind (and playoffs are too) so there is definitely consideration for these factors when planning the day-to-day roster.
To answer your other question, baseball is very popular in the Central American countries as well as the Near East countries (to borrow United States parlance).
It's a philosophical game with long periods of
boredomstrategic maneuvering punctuated by moments of intense excitement.In a way it's like a cricket match condensed down to one day for each game, if that helps. It's like cricket match if each game were required to finish in one session. Each "series" (like a cricket match) is 3-7 games against the other team depending on the circumstances, but each game in the series must be completed (in one session) in full before the next can start.