In the end, of course, it is always about money—and in this case more than any ever handed to an athlete: $700 million over 10 years. But it was Ohtani who told his agent, Nez Balelo, to craft a deal with so much deferred money that it would reduce the Dodgers’ hit toward their competitive tax rate.
In that way, Ohtani told his agent, the contract would not prevent the Dodgers from continuing to compete for the postseason every year. Ohtani suggested he defer more than half the $700 million at below-market interest rates. The math still needs to be done by the commissioner’s office and the players association, but the annual present-day value against the CBT could be about $50 million at the lowest, but probably higher, according to a rival club executive.
The contract numbers solve two needs: Balelo and Ohtani get the bragging rights of leapfrogging Lionel Messi for the largest contract signed by an athlete, and the Dodgers get a player for about $50 million a year who can return as much as $25 million a year in ancillary income and brand value, according to the owner of a rival team.
“It ends up like a lot of these high-profile deals,” says an executive from a team in the early Ohtani sweepstakes. “The final number is the bright, shiny object. It’s how you get to those numbers—the details of it—that matter.
“This is where everybody thought it was going to wind up all along. The Dodgers were in him since high school. It’s the same city [as the Angels]. Teams felt all along they did not want to play the role of the stalking horse. The Dodgers’ M.O. has always been that they don’t move until they have to. I guess the ‘plane ride’ worked.”
https://www.si.com/mlb/2023/12/09/dodgers-decade-long-pursuit-shohei-ohtani-finally-comes-through
