WpgPage wrote:Well that 36 number seams low it says in the article that Detroit is only getting 40/ year right now so depending on when this deal was signed it vary well could have been fair market value. Again with these negotiations all in-house we will never know. The Jays are never going to get the numbers the big US teams get Baseball is just not viewed as popular enough in Canada to warrant those numbers. The Jays will be fully off revenue sharing by 2015 so the TV deal will have to increase in order to cover that lost money. All in all I really don't like this article at all the writer is clearly biased on this issue and there is no information about when that deal was signed or it's term critical factors that you need to know before you can start ripping the Jays apart for this one.
However, if they Jays renegotiate a deal at the same level for the next few years then Beaston should be fired to have little or no growth in revenue when the ratings for the team have nearly doubled is ridiculous. I already think he should be fired over his comments at the state of the franchise address regarding contract length, not that I really disagree with him, but you can't handicap your GM's negotiating position like that. Hopefully the next CEO of the Jays is hired by the Jays and not by Rogers.
The writer is not saying anything I haven't said without access to the numbers. Television rights revenues are soaring. That, in turn, is going to keep driving up payroll costs for adding or keeping talent. It's like that in every sport. What rationale is there for the league wide average salary in the NBA to be $5 million/year? None, except it reflects the players' revenue split in an era of rising network and local TV revenues.
By any objective analysis, with what the networks all see as the revenue potential of making sports content available on multiple platforms, the Jays' rights going forward should be worth two to three times what the team is getting, considering the national audience for the Jays. It's as if the Dodgers were the only baseball team on all TV sets in all of California, not just sharing the southern California market with the Angels and Padres.
Even more egregious us the fact Rogers has more access than any of its competitors to the distribution channels. Unlike New York, where there was a ridiculous battle between MSG and Time Warner the past several weeks over how much Time Warner would pay to get Knicks/Ranger/Devils games (a dispute so silly that TW cut off those games and New Yorkers had to go to friends, relatives or sports bars with other cable or sat providers to see Jeremy Lin play), Rogers has more than half the distribution locked up with its own cable and wireless. Rogers Corporate can screw Rogers Cable on what it pays to show the Sportsnet channels, then claim Rogers Cable doesn't make any money and therefore they have to keep jacking up rates.
Dowbiggen doesn't even capture the distribution side of Rogers vertical integration.
It's a screwjob on Jays fans. I accept that maybe it's an old deal that might get better, but if I were betting on it, the screwjob is going to continue, and become more egregious because Rogers has this amazing cash cow that probably covers up for multiple failures and inefficiencies elsewhere in the empire - and they aren't going to surrender any of it. It mutes criticism of senior management -except from hardcore ball fans whom they ignore - because the stock market analysts will overlook a serious deficiency in the operation if the overall picture is excellent. It's just like Apple with AppleTV. Who the hell cares AppleTV never had much success when Apple is selling a billion iPods, iPads and iPhones? Same thing with Rogers.
