Historical league finances are crazy!

[baseballfanmas]

Playing GM with the 1991 Braves. Just signed Terry Pendleton to a 7 year contract extension worth $6,950,000. That's for the whole contract, not per year. Wow, were contracts really that cheap back then? Crazyness!

[The Game]

Originally Posted by baseballfanmas

Playing GM with the 1991 Braves. Just signed Terry Pendleton to a 7 year contract extension worth $6,950,000. That's for the whole contract, not per year. Wow, were contracts really that cheap back then? Crazyness!

Seems like you got a deal.

[Hammercraft]

Yep, in 1991 Robin Yount briefly became the highest paid player in baseball, signing a contract for $3M/year after winning his second MVP

[NoOne]

when you apply inflation to those #'s it's not as large of a spread... player salaries are far exceeding the rate of inflation, so it's still quite a spread.

at 3% inflation, 3M in 1991 = ~6.28M after 25 years. so, players are about 4-5X better paid today than in 1991, based soley on Robin yount, lol... so, take that with a grain of salt.

[Aumakua]

Jerry Reinsdorf bought the White Sox in 1981 for $19 million and the Bulls in 1984 for $16 million.

if you factor in inflation they should only be worth $52 Million and $40 Million today.

BUT those franchises are worth $1.05 BILLION and $2.3 BILLION

That's why player salaries inflated so much recently, revenue is insane for these leagues now (because of fan interest and marketing, which came first chicken or the egg?)

[Painmantle]

Originally Posted by Aumakua

Jerry Reinsdorf bought the White Sox in 1981 for $19 million and the Bulls in 1984 for $16 million.

if you factor in inflation they should only be worth $52 Million and $40 Million today.

BUT those franchises are worth $1.05 BILLION and $2.3 BILLION

That's why player salaries inflated so much recently, revenue is insane for these leagues now (because of fan interest and marketing, which came first chicken or the egg?)

That's not how the inflationary scale works, That scale only tells you what the value of something is in on the target date based on actual current value , A Franchises value can rise faster than inflation. The scale does nothing more than compare buying power of the dollar between the 2 historical times

What your scenario means is "IF" the Bulls and White Sox were worth now relatively the same as they were then, they would sell for 52mil and 40mil, but they are worth More now (1.05 and 2.3bil)

In reverse, A Franchise worth 1.05bil today would have sold for $380mil in 1981 and 433mil in 1984