2025 Cubs

[MrSheps]

Helps to have a ridiculous TV contract paying 2010 rates too. Otherwise I don’t see them spending close to $400M on payroll. You can take a lot more risks and make mistakes and no one will ever know.

Yeah, I find it frustrating that so many people don't seem to realize what a big deal this is, whether it's fans here in LA, or those in the media. The Dodgers deal with what was then Time Warner pays them 8.35 Billion over 25 years, and has a payment structure, if I recall correctly, that's set up to increase the payment each year. Because some viewed the whole thing as a "mistake" for some time when so many fans couldn't access the channel, the utter luckiness of the whole thing got overshadowed. It was a huge mistake, for TW, not the Dodgers. Moreover, the Dodgers then lucked out again because when Spectrum took over Time Warner, a Bally's situation could have occurred, but of course it didn't, somehow the ridiculous deal was written off.

So the Dodgers will make north of 400 million this year in TV, while the Cubs, some estimate, will generate 90 million. The Dodgers basically start with the vast majority of their insane payrolls already in hand thanks to TV. It's not that they're bold risk takers or whatever, they won the lottery with that deal. They don't have a TV audience that justifies it, not even close.