Despite the recent surge in interest, MLB is careening toward a labor meltdown. A lockout next winter is all but certain. The entire industry is bracing for the possibility of missed games for the first time since the strike of 1994.
At the heart of the dispute is a fundamental question that is essential to the health of any professional sports business: Is baseball fair?
Most team owners don’t think so, arguing that the disparity in revenues between big-market franchises and their smaller counterparts has become unsustainable, resulting in a fractured competitive landscape. As proof, they point to the Los Angeles Dodgers, the juggernaut whose back-to-back titles and record-setting payrolls have turned them into the proxy for all of MLB’s supposed problems.
The solution, management insists, is a salary cap in the only major American sport without one—and a majority of fans seem to agree.
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Despite the recent surge in interest, MLB is careening toward a labor meltdown. A lockout next winter is all but certain. The entire industry is bracing for the possibility of missed games for the first time since the strike of 1994.
At the heart of the dispute is a fundamental question that is essential to the health of any professional sports business: Is baseball fair?
Most team owners don’t think so, arguing that the disparity in revenues between big-market franchises and their smaller counterparts has become unsustainable, resulting in a fractured competitive landscape. As proof, they point to the Los Angeles Dodgers, the juggernaut whose back-to-back titles and record-setting payrolls have turned them into the proxy for all of MLB’s supposed problems.
The solution, management insists, is a salary cap in the only major American sport without one—and a majority of fans seem to agree.
Read more (free link): [https://www.wsj.com/sports/baseball/dodgers-world-series-competitive-balance-fd7fc7ed?st=8b1NiT&mod=wsjreddit](https://www.wsj.com/sports/baseball/dodgers-world-series-competitive-balance-fd7fc7ed?st=8b1NiT&mod=wsjreddit)