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https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/ny-madden-blue-jays-20210130-yuqxdwepcvahtneuhitq3dr3bu-story.html?fbclid=IwAR133cV1r_iTnyR-u0MIsE5m2LAJXbyIFdmrabc2Vd2B6TmPIjSpWHVszVU

How in the world are the Blue Jays paying for all their offseason acquisitions?

There is speculation that Rogers Communications, which also owns the TV and radio rights to the Blue Jays games, forgave the rebate owed them by the team for the loss of all the games last year, which was as much as $75-100 million. If so, that would be considered outside revenue, and it’s understandable if the rest of the teams in baseball — particularly the large market clubs like the Yankees, Mets, Phillies, Red Sox and Cubs who will be paying revenue sharing in 2021 — could be feeling they have subsidized all this Blue Jay spending this winter.

What a bizarre take by the New York media.

Jays have a barely above league average payroll. Meanwhile, the two New York teams are both in the top-3 for payroll leaguewide.

The issue isn’t that they have a high payroll, it’s that Rogers is apparently is not paying into revenue sharing through the Jays (that appears to be what Steven Cohen is complaining about, I assume he’s the one using the NYDN journalist as a mouthpiece there based on the Springer comment).

I’m not actually sure how the league can really deal with that, though. Rogers pays themselves (the Jays) a fraction of what the television rights are actually worth. The revenues on the books for them are completely artificial and that has always been the case.

Randle McMurphy wrote:The issue isn’t that they have a high payroll, it’s that Rogers is apparently is not paying into revenue sharing through the Jays (that appears to be what Steven Cohen is complaining about, I assume he’s the one using the NYDN journalist as a mouthpiece there based on the Springer comment).

I’m not actually sure how the league can really deal with that, though. Rogers pays themselves (the Jays) a fraction of what the television rights are actually worth. The revenues on the books for them are completely artificial and that has always been the case.

I mean, isn't that what has been used as an excuse for the Jays NOT paying a lot of money on payroll in the past? That they aren't making as much from TV rights as they should be if there was open bidding on the rights?

Randle McMurphy wrote:The issue isn’t that they have a high payroll, it’s that Rogers is apparently is not paying into revenue sharing through the Jays (that appears to be what Steven Cohen is complaining about, I assume he’s the one using the NYDN journalist as a mouthpiece there based on the Springer comment).

If it's about revenue sharing, then why bring the Jays' payroll into it at al? That would be an issue (although not remotely a new issue) regardless if the Jays had the league highest payroll, the lowest, or just about league average.

If they want to complain that one group of millionaires/billionaires is unfairly making money off another group of millionaires/billionaires, then they can say that. But that's entirely separate to the Jays finally spending at a league average amount.

Steve Cohen buys a stake in the Mets for $2.4 billion, loses $2.8 billion in the GameStop squeeze, and lashes out at... a Canadian telecom company? Sure.

With revenues taking a hit league-wide, I'm surprised to see the Jays spending so freely as well. Rogers could have easily used the pandemic as an excuse to avoid bringing expensive veterans in. I'm not going to gush over them allowing a league average payroll, but it could easily have been lower.

Fairview4Life wrote:
I mean, isn't that what has been used as an excuse for the Jays NOT paying a lot of money on payroll in the past? That they aren't making as much from TV rights as they should be if there was open bidding on the rights?

Yeah. Rogers reaps significant benefits on the back end from owning the Jays' rights, but from a straight revenue perspective for the club it's likely that they'd make much more if there was an open bidding process, because regional sports networks have an absurd incentive to chase the rights of their hometown teams at any cost.

That might well change in short order, because the RSNs have treated sports rights as a loss leader, and there are effectively only two major and a few minor players left: NBC/Comcast and Sinclair (which owns most of the Fox Sports RSNs now) own the vast majority, while AT&T/Turner, Spectrum and Altitude have markets as well, but are more limited in scope. If the industry consolidates further, the rights bubble might well pop.

Lateral Quicks wrote:With revenues taking a hit league-wide, I'm surprised to see the Jays spending so freely as well. Rogers could have easily used the pandemic as an excuse to avoid bringing expensive veterans in. I'm not going to gush over them allowing a league average payroll, but it could easily have been lower.

But it’s relative. The Jays had a similar payroll last season waiting for all the bad salary to drop off. Right now, even after all that spending, the payroll ranks 13th at $128 million. It was $121 mill last season. There is only $64 million on the books for 2022 so if things go sour, they’re not committed into the future.

But we can’t look at the Jays in a bubble here, for whatever reason, salaries and team payrolls haven’t taken the hit many expected. Some teams are slashing like the Cubs, the very small market Padres are spending freely. They’re now 7th in payroll. It doesn’t look that much different than most off seasons.

The Padres aren't terribly small-market anymore, for what it's worth. While they still make less than most teams from their RSN deal, it's not a massive gap between what they take in and the middle class teams do:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/lets-update-the-estimated-local-tv-revenue-for-mlb-teams/

Forbes placed their revenues at 17th as of last year, which was significantly higher than ours:

https://www.forbes.com/mlb-valuations/list/#header:revenue_sortreverse:true


In addition to their lowish revenues in years past, they owed a bunch of money on the stadium (though naturally, public money covered the majority), but have paid a lot of that down.

Beyond the market size thing, they're also the only show in town now, which matters. The Chargers left and they don't even have an MLS team (only USL). College sports are a big deal, sure, but that's true across the US. They may not be the biggest market but they don't have any competition.

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Fairview4Life wrote:

Randle McMurphy wrote:The issue isn’t that they have a high payroll, it’s that Rogers is apparently is not paying into revenue sharing through the Jays (that appears to be what Steven Cohen is complaining about, I assume he’s the one using the NYDN journalist as a mouthpiece there based on the Springer comment).

I’m not actually sure how the league can really deal with that, though. Rogers pays themselves (the Jays) a fraction of what the television rights are actually worth. The revenues on the books for them are completely artificial and that has always been the case.

I mean, isn't that what has been used as an excuse for the Jays NOT paying a lot of money on payroll in the past? That they aren't making as much from TV rights as they should be if there was open bidding on the rights?

I’ve heard whispers in the media for 20 years that Rogers uses creative accounting to take advantage of baseballs revenue sharing system.


I get the impression that Rogers treats the blue jays as some sort of legalized tv revenue money laundering scheme that only a c.a could explain.

Whatever the truths of Rogers value extraction from the Blue Jays, last season, abbreviated though it was, the team had some extraordinary expenses no other team had, playing in Buffalo. The other teams got to use their regular facilities and stadiums, the Jays had to upgrade Buffalo with millions spent on lighting, temporary clubhouses, moving equipment from Toronto and Dunedin to make Buffalo work. And the players didn't live at home, they lived in a hotel when in Buffalo. So I give Rogers a pass on anything it did to benefit the team, and the NY media can basically go FI.

Rogers can access more leverage than these billionaire owners. What BS.