Wednesday, 18 February 2004

Sharing the love

David Pinto has a revenue sharing plan for baseball:

I’ve felt for a long time that what baseball needs is a competitive form of revenue sharing. Teams would be paid for their road games based on how many people they brought in, not just in the stadium, but for the TV and radio audiences as well. This would encourage teams to sign an Alex Rodriguez, since they would make money from the fans he would draw on the road.

Something vaguely similar happens in college football—road teams in non-conference games normally get an appearance fee. Something like that makes sense for baseball as a revenue-sharing mechanism—after all, George Steinbrenner wouldn’t be making much money if the Yankees didn’t play opponents at home. Someone more awake than me will have to figure out the fairest way of implementing such a system; my guess is that, unreliable as they are, tying the “opponent share” to the existing TV and radio ratings is the way to go.