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Bruce Dowbiggin

MLB’s Exploding Chequebook: Parity Is Now For Suckers

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MLB has seen parity and proclaimed, “We don’t give a damn!” Okay, they didn’t say that. In fact they insist the opposite is true. They’re all about competition and smaller markets getting a shot at a title. But as the 2024 offseason spending shows, believe none of what you hear and half of what you see in MLB.

Here’s the skinny: Juan Soto‘s contract with the NY Mets — 15 years and guaranteeing $765 million, not a penny of which is deferred. Max Fried signed an eight-year, $218 million deal with the New York Yankees. Later, Nathan Eovaldi secured a three-year, $75 million contract to return to the Texas Rangers. Blake Snell (five years, $182 million with the Los Angeles Dodgers) and Matthew Boyd (two years, $29 million with the Chicago Cubs) added to the splurge.

There’s one more thing that stands out. MLB has no trouble with the financial big boys in New York, Los Angles, Texas, Toronto, Atlanta and Chicago shelling out money no small market dare pay. In the MLB cheap seats, Tampa, Pittsburgh  and Miami can’t send out quality players fast enough. But MLB is cool with that, too, as those paupers get a healthy slice of TV money.

So yes, they’re all about talking parity with their luxury tax system. But to keep the TV, digital, betting and marketing lucre flowing they have to have large media markets swinging the heaviest bats come postseason. The question is, do MLB fans care the way they used to about parity? It says here they don’t. More want to seed best-on-best more often. Which is brutal but refreshing.

Their sister leagues, married to draconian salary cap systems, are still pushing parity, even as they expand beyond recognition. In our 2004 book Money Players, legendary Boston Bruins coach/ GM Harry Sinden noted, “The problem with teams in the league, is that there were (then) 20 teams who all think they are going to  win the Stanley Cup and they all are going to share it. But only one team is going to win it. The rest are chasing a rainbow.”

And that was before the expansion Vegas Golden Knights won a Cup within five years while the third-year Seattle Kraken made a run in those same 2023 playoffs. There are currently 32 teams in the league, each chasing Sinden’s rainbow of a Stanley Cup. That means 31 cranky fan bases every year. And 31 management teams trying to avoid getting fired.

Maybe we’ve reached peak franchise level? Uh, no. Not so long as salary-capped leagues can use the dream of parity to sell more franchises. As we wrote in October of 2023, “If you believe the innuendo coming from commissioner Gary Bettman there is a steady appetite for getting a piece of the NHL operation. “The best answer I can give you is that we have continuous expressions of interest from places like Houston, Atlanta, Quebec City, Salt Lake City, but expansion isn’t on the agenda.” In the next breath Bettman was predicting that any new teams will cost “A lot, a lot.”

Deputy commissioner Bill Daly echoed Bettman’s caution about a sudden expansion but added, ”Having said that, particularly with the success of the Vegas and Seattle expansions, there are more people who want to own professional hockey teams.” Translation: If the NHL can get a billion for a new team, the heck with competitive excellence, the clock might start ticking sooner. After all, small-market Ottawa just went for $950.”

It’s not just the expansion-obsessed NHL talking more teams. MLB is looking to add franchises. Abandoned Montreal is once more getting palpitations over rumours that the league wants to return to the city that lost its Expos in 2005. Recent reports indicate that while MLB might prefer Salt Lake City and Nashville it also feels it must right the wrong left when the Expos moved to Washington DC 19 years ago.

The city needs a new ballpark to replace disastrous Olympic Stadium. They’ll also need more than Tom Brady to fund the franchise fee and operating costs. And Quebec corporate support— always transitory in the Expos years— will need to be strong. But two more MLB franchises within five years is a lock.

While the NBA is mum on going past 30 teams it has not shut the door on expansion after seeing the NHL cashing in. Neither has the cash-generating monster known as the NFL where teams currently sell for over six billion US. The NFL is eyeing Europe for its next moves.

The question that has to be asked in this is, WTF, quality of competition? The more teams in a league the lower the chances of even getting to a semifinal series let alone a championship. Fans in cities starved for a championship— the NFL’s Detroit Lions or Cleveland Browns are entering their seventh decade without a title or the Toronto Maple Leafs title-less since 1967— know how corrosive it can be.

Getting to 34, 36, maybe 40 teams makes for a short-term score for owners, but it could leave leagues with an entire strata of loser teams that no one—least of all networks, carriers and advertisers—wants to see. Generations of fans will be like Canuck supporters, going their entire lives without a championship.

In addition, as we’ve argued in our 2018 book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps Are Killing Pro Sports and How The Free Market Can Save Them, watering down the product with a lot of teams no one wants to watch nationally or globally seems counter productive. The move away from quality toward quantity serves only the gambling industry. But since when has Gary Bettman Truly cared about quality of the product? So long as he gets to say, “We have a trade to announce” at the Draft, he’s a happy guy.

When we published Cap In Hand we proposed a system like soccer with ranked divisions using promotion and relegation to ensure competition, not parity. Most of the interviewers we spoke to were skeptical of the idea. But as MLB steams closer to economic Darwinism our proposal is looking more credible every day. Play at the level you can afford. Or just watch Ted Lasso. Your choice.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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BRUCE DOWBIGGIN Award-winning Author and Broadcaster Bruce Dowbiggin's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience . He is currently the editor and publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster website and is also a contributor to SiriusXM Canada Talks. His new book Cap In Hand was released in the fall of 2018. Bruce's career has included successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster for his work with CBC-TV, Mr. Dowbiggin is also the best-selling author of "Money Players" (finalist for the 2004 National Business Book Award) and two new books-- Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever for Greystone Press and Grant Fuhr: Portrait of a Champion for Random House. His ground-breaking investigations into the life and times of Alan Eagleson led to his selection as the winner of the Gemini for Canada's top sportscaster in 1993 and again in 1996. This work earned him the reputation as one of Canada's top investigative journalists in any field. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013) where his incisive style and wit on sports media and business won him many readers.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Why Best Friends Are Fighting: Tariffs Are Just Trump’s First Salvo

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Trump is holding a mirror to a postmodern Canadian state that still thinks it’s Bob & Doug McKenzie and polite folk opening the door. Maybe it was at one time, but since Justin Trudeau spread his chocolatey goodness on the nation it’s now a world centre for money laundering that won’t pay its defence obligations.

The hysteria was mint this past weekend from panicky Canadians acting as if Donald Trump’s tariffs were a Pearl Harbor sneak-attack. They booed the Star Spangled Banner at sporting events, had conniption fits of self pity (‘we’ve been friends for so long!”) and generally acted like fainting goats by forgoing U.S. sun holidays.

Whatever the merits of Trump’s beefs the indignant reaction revealed a very unsettled nation. Punishing America by pulling wines you’ve already paid for off the shelves is baffling. Cancelling a Star Link contract with Elon Musk is just a self goal. (A chastened Musk replied, “Oh well!”) Alberta premier Danielle Smith, who’d used negotiating to get a cutout for Canadian oil, being roundly called a vendu by the righteous Eastern horde was precious.

Charter members of the crumbling legacy media outdid themselves in promoting Trudeau’s fanciful Team Canada theme. “This is a mind poisoned with grievance and resentment,” raged CBC panelist Andrew Coyne. “So coked up on his own bile that even in a moment of maximum national peril his first thought is how to use it to settle scores with the rest of the country.”

Well then. It was all rather unseemly. Noted Dilbert creator Scott Adams, “Canada’s response to Trump’s tariffs is to be publicly sad about it.” But are Trump’s concerns genuine? Is he picking unfairly on a longtime pal? The fact is that Trump is holding a mirror to a postmodern Canadian state that still thinks it’s Bob & Doug McKenzie and polite folk opening the door. Maybe it was at one time, but since Justin Trudeau spread his chocolatey goodness on the nation it’s now a world centre for money laundering that won’t pay its defence obligations.

Example: TD Bank was just fined $3B by US regulators for laundering fentanyl drug money back to Communist China. It’s the largest such fine in U.S. history.  A fine TD paid without complaint. Trudeau’s Canada is a credit-bubble real estate play inside a WEF construct wrapped up in an entitled clique that sits in first class but only pays economy. (And don’t get us started on the unsolved Sherman murders.)

Having gotten their news from CBC and Toronto Star, the average CDN does not understand any of this. While the Libs/ NDP swoon over climate and pronouns, Canada has become a place that Trump and other nations simply don’t trust. Security officials fear that anything said to Trudeau’s government will end up getting to China or other bad actors. And many of those same bad actors are domiciled in Canada at the moment. (The RCMP say there are over 4,000 separate groups dealing drugs in Canada.)

Canada’s exclusion from surveillance organizations like AUKUS and the G7 Quint talks is enough to tell you that Trump is not alone in distrusting Canada. Under the previous Obama doctrine, Canada was cool so long as it did DEI, ESG and had kittens over climate. Biden let the Great White North snooze away under Trudeau. The new American administration, however, has a higher bar of expectations.

Ones Trudeaupia has not met. How do you describe America’s sense of astonishment when it asked its “loyal friend” Canada not to import 5,000 undocumented Gazans during this current shooting war, not wanting terrorist sympathizers along its northern border. Then, out of spite, Trudeau’s response was to bring them in, give them healthcare and do photo ops with them?

Trudeau has also lectured Americans for electing Trump and not a woman in 2024. No wonder Trump played them last weekend about their lax border security. One of the “brilliant” ripostes on borders — repeated by all the clever people— was that only one percent of America’s fentanyl comes from Canada. For those who think that’s a mic-drop moment consider: that’s fentanyl seized by America at the border.

Here, Canada’s international crime agency destroys the one-percent argument. Canada is a major manufacturer and distributor of fentanyl. How major? There is a technique used by international drug and money launderers called the Vancouver Model.

As a recent discovery of 8 Kg during a truck stop in Swift Current illustrates, the amounts undiscovered in Canada and the U.S. that originate from shipments to Montreal or Vancouver are way more than the CDN media parroted over the weekend. For those booing the Star Spangled Banner, note that 8 kg. is enough for four million deadly doses of fentanyl. (B.C. NDP premier David Eby had to confess he can’t even begin to inspect all the drugs flowing through Vancouver).

This story of a Punjabi driver arrested in Manitoba with $50M in meth in his truck gives you the flavour. Last month, Toronto police seized 835kg from a truck and stash houses across the city. And, say experts, there are more terror suspects coming from Canada to America than from Mexico. Now tell us why the unchecked importation, distribution and profits from the drugs are not significant in a trade deal.

Speaking of truckers, Canada’s explosion in newly arrived cross-border truck drivers is another huge issue for Americans. As Toronto business writer Stephen Punwasi @stephenpunwasi explains a good portion of the “students” coming into the nation are getting a very different education on life in Canada. “Canada had no checks or balances for its study program. No background checks or school verification. Just show up at the airport w/ proof of funds, and a letter they won’t verify. That’s it. ” These “graduates” quickly end up in a rig running contraband drugs, guns and tech to supplement their minuscule earnings.

“Between 2017 & 2024, Ontario went from 80 truck driving schools to 280. The province has 6 auditors for 600 private career colleges—almost half for trucks, apparently. No enforcement standards.

“To recap,” continues Punwasi:

  • “money laundering capital of the world

  • – no school regulations

  • – criminals run certifications

  • – desperate folks from developing countries w/no standard of entry

  • – no scrutiny for x-border traffic”

Canadian trucking executives know the problem in the industry. They say new entrants make no money trucking, but they do make for easy “‘runners’. It is rampant. One executive says his firm has virtually exited the cross-border business, because of the changing demographics. These truckers— many of them speaking no English— are housed in suburban neighbourhoods in Brampton or Mississauga or Surrey, stacked by the dozens in barracks homes in between their sorties to the U.S. and the ROC. Attempts to restore local zoning laws are fought by the ringleaders.

But hey, says CBC, Trump exaggerates the problem. He’s also contemptuous of the current attempt to slide climate alarmist Mark Carney into Trudeau’s seat. The dread of being lectured by a CBC-approved suit like Carney is only leavened by the prospect that he can deal with Pierre Poilievre when— if— the Liberals ever let Canadians voice their will. This is what Canada’s Left call progress. Save the tundra and the Arctic swallow but crater the economy.

A final feature of the pearl clutching this past weekend was the idea that Trump would somehow invade or otherwise claim Canada as a 51st state. Canadians seem to feel that Trump’s job is to pacify their feelings, not act on behalf of those Americans who decisively elected him and his mandate. Like victims of a high school break-up Canadian progressives are now tearing up all the letters and sending back the jewelry from their tryst. Memo to Canada: Being U.S. president is not joining a book club. As such you don’t elect a trust-fund poseur.

Whatever Trump’s jest, the last thing he wants is the culture nightmare of Quebec, the vast land claims of the native tribes, the welfare status of the Maritimes and the unbearable smugness of the Flora MacDonald Marching Band in Ontario. If Canada or Canadians are to join America it will be because they’ve asked in, not be captured. Trump would dictate the terms, and he doesn’t want a dozen new Mississippis, especially ones with poutine.

For now, the 30-day pause in tariffs allows time to drop the theatrics and get on with the reality of an economy that will consume Canada’s economy at the present rate. By week’s end even Trump’s vitriolic critics like the Globe&Mail were offering backhanded acknowledgements that, however crude they found the president’s tactics, he did wake up Canadians to the issue of Canada’s lassitude on defence and the border. Doomberg summed up the conflict. “The economic wisdom of applying tariffs is worthy of debate, but the threat of tariffs has proved the perfect instrument for the task. Having weighed 250 daily American deaths on the scale of trade-offs, Trump’s actions have finally acknowledged reality. Godspeed’.”

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

The Limping Loonie: Are Canada’s Pro Sports Team In Trouble Again?

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With the Canada/ U.S. Tariff War going from talking conflict to hot trade war on Feb. 1 there are numerous predictions as to what might happen if the dispute drags on. As the sides in the Ukraine War will tell you very few of the outcomes so far were foreseen by the sides when the shooting started. That’s the nature of these conflicts.

One immediate byproduct seems to be the continued descent toward 60 cents by the Canadian dollar. If Trudeau and his anointed successor Mark Carney are true to character it will also involve billions in cheques going out the door— a la Covid— to those citizens “harmed” by the Liberals stumbling into a highly predictable and easily avoidable trade war. If past is prologue, vast amounts of that money will disappear as bad actors find a way to access the funds. While Canada’s GDP collapses some more.

For the moment, however, let us concentrate on what Justin Trudeau’s ineptitude might be costing Canadian professional sports teams in American-based leagues. On the purely trivial level it means that your beer at the park/ arena will be Canadian suds exclusively. Not cheaper or better. Just Canadian. Owners will stock luxury boxes with Canadian wine, etc. A road trip to see the Canucks in L.A. or the Canadiens in NYC will balloon, too.

But on a more serious level the showdown between Donald Trump and Trudeau could well return Canadian teams in the NHL to the bad-old days of the early  21st century. Despite efforts then to create a Canadian fund to save teams, two clubs— Winnipeg Jets and Quebec Nordiques— were forced to sell because of a dollar that bottomed out around 62 cents U.S. Winnipeg went to Phoenix/ Quebec City went to Colorado as a result

In Montreal the MLB Expos also moved— to Washington— after 37 years, because no one in Quebec would/ could pony up the money to make up for the declining dollar or repair the disastrous Olympic Stadium. Expos fans then had the cruel fate of watching Washington win the 2019 World Series after the Expos had never gotten that far. (Nordiques fans saw Colorado win two Stanley Cups after escaping Quebec.)

Why were these teams forced to move? Because while teams collect revenues locally in Canadian dollars almost all their payroll and other costs are paid in American dollars. So when you see the Toronto Blue Jays facing a possible US $500 million price tag to keep star Vladimir Guerrero you’re really talking about raising $750,000 million in CDN revenues to meet the demand. Multiply those jumps over a 25-man roster and you’re talking a huge jump in payroll— or being consigned to after-ran status.

While no one  is about to hold a tag day for Toronto it will make the Jays’ job of competing in a division with the big-spending New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox that much harder. With a national market of almost 40 million now to exploit they still have resources. But will American players want to play in Canada during a hot trade war between the nations? Now that yahoos fed by a doltish CDN media have started booing the Star Spangled Banner in Ottawa and Vancouver before games do you think that will encourage American stars on teams there to stick around?

But the NHL is where the biggest losses will be seen. Already there have been concerns about the Jets.2 surviving in Winnipeg. Last week it was revealed that after years spent coming back from Covid revenue shortages, the NHL is going to raise its salary cap from today’s US $88 million to as much as an estimated US $115 million in three or four years. The news that players will no longer have escrow payments held back to compensate owners for revenue shortages was greeted with cheers by players and their agent.

The boost in the cap will likely mean that today’s US$14 million peak (Leon Draisaitl) will also advance to somewhere just beneath US$20 million a season. And while that figure is a few years off, teams will have to start negotiating today with their stars with that figure in mind if they wish to retain them.

The test case will be superstar Connor McDavid who is due for a new contract after 2025-26. For the small-market Edmonton Oilers that will mean creating a template that buys him out of estimated salary later by boosting his salary before the cap arrives at its peak. With Draisaitl already pulling down top dollar the Oilers’ resources will be stretched thin to accommodate McDavid— while still paying the rest of the roster.

Could the drop in the dollar produce another Gretzky-like trade for Edmonton when the Oilers were forced to dump the greatest scorer in NHL history to L.A. because his worth exceeded the Oilers’ ability to pay? We chronicle the trade in depth in our new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey.

The fate of hockey stars will be only a small piece of any future U.S. trade deals. But they will be highly visible to Canada’s hockey fans. Not being able to satisfy them is a political price no pelican wants to face. But given the current intransigence by Justin Trudeau scrambling to stay in office it is far from improbable.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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