What's your opinion on revenue sharing?

[UltimateAverageGuy]

Do you think its really for baseballs benefit? Do you think it works for fictioal leagues as well? Just curious on opinions.

[Mr. Marlin]

I turn it off. If a franchise can't survive where it is on it's own I move it.

[Brad K]

I leave it on. I want the game to be as close to reality as possible even on issue I disagree with. (My disagreement with revenue sharing isn't that it exists, but rather in the way its structured.)

[dpd376]

Instead of a luxury tax I just use a flat 40% of revenues. Big markets still have a decent advantage, but not like the Yankees or Red Sox do in MLB.

[NoOne]

da*n communists!

JK... i don't share ticket revenue. i used to have a very hefty luxury tax, but it doesn't redistrubute the money in a seemingly meaningful way, so now i just use a hard cap.

is the money even useable or is it only given at end of year when it's useless? this dynamic is important... affecting cash on hand makes the meager amounts they are alotted through redistribution even less influential.

if it adds to the 'next' year's projected budget, then it's capable of helping a team a bit. i'm not sure how it works currently.

even if it does add to the 'next year', it doesn't change the fact that 3-6M is a drop in teh bucket even if it does add to their budget space and not simply help with cash on hand (which needs to be limited for the game to work well, objectively speaking, so it can't help much in this respect in many years when cap is reach anyway.)

i want gods and clods... i want the surpise small market success, and i want to see at least 1 other organization have sustained success due to its embarassment of riches. less re-distribution of capitol increases likelihood

[RonCo]

Depends on what kind of environment you want to create. As best I can say, a cap is about 3x better at evening the competitive environment as revenue sharing.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by NoOne

da*n communists!

JK... i don't share ticket revenue.

Without a visiting team there would be no game. The visiting team provides value to the event but you want it to provide that value for free.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by UltimateAverageGuy

Do you think its really for baseballs benefit? Do you think it works for fictioal leagues as well? Just curious on opinions.

A good simulation should emulate reality. Options present should be exercised to improve the situation not degrade it. So an improved situation in a fictional league is a good thing.

As I pointed out in another post regarding a comment on not sharing ticket revenue, the visiting team provides value to the event. Without it there would be no event. So it should be paid for the value it brings to the event.

Beyond that, competition is good for an industry. If an industry provides a poor product consumers will go elsewhere.Skill is not the sole thing determining financial success. Its often right place right time, luck, or unforeseeable events. Mechanisms must be in place to maintain competition despite these factors.

OOTP assigns market size randomly. And there's a non-skill feature real life too. In the 50s the Dodgers made a reasonable decision that being the only team in LA was better than being one of three teams in NY. But I doubt at the time anyone could predict the population growth in the LA area from the 50s to today.

Why would the Cubs and Giants end up with 2/3 of the fans in two team markets? And the As were very successful within a few years of going to the West Coast. Is the result skill or luck?

If an industry doesn't have competition the overall product will suffer. Consumers may spend their money elsewhere. There are alternatives for them.

And so for the good of the simulation and real life baseball, revenue sharing is necessary.

[actionjackson]

I have revenue sharing on set at 31% like (I think, haven't checked lately, but I think it is) it is IRL. In my view it's not a "communist" thing. It's seeing the business as MLB (or whatever your league is named) and the clubs as franchises of that business. The more clubs that do well, the better off the business will be, and revenue sharing is definitely a piece of that puzzle. I will never, ever, ever, ever have a salary cap though. That's how you create trades where all the money has to balance out and everything has to go through the "capologist". Not interested in playing "capologist" thanks. Give me prospects for veterans trades every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Much harder to do with a cap.

[Lordofbrewtown]

I assume your asking because you don't care about 100% simulating MLB. I'm all for revenue sharing & no luxury tax. My theory is that you don't have a game if not for the other team(s). Personally, I think all types of revenues should be shared @ 50% (including local broadcasts & merchandise). The big market teams should still be at an advantage - as the 50% they keep is more than the 50% the smaller market teams keep.

As far as in OOTP, I have generally used simulations. Just trying my first fictional league now - through 1 year with 50% revenue sharing, and no problems yet (though it's very early in my experience using financials in the game).

[TheMaus2]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Without a visiting team there would be no game. The visiting team provides value to the event but you want it to provide that value for free.

It's his game though. And it's not like one team is playing all 162 games at home and another playing 162 on the road.

[TheMaus2]

Originally Posted by actionjackson

I have revenue sharing on set at 31% like (I think, haven't checked lately, but I think it is) it is IRL. In my view it's not a "communist" thing. It's seeing the business as MLB (or whatever your league is named) and the clubs as franchises of that business. The more clubs that do well, the better off the business will be, and revenue sharing is definitely a piece of that puzzle. I will never, ever, ever, ever have a salary cap though. That's how you create trades where all the money has to balance out and everything has to go through the "capologist". Not interested in playing "capologist" thanks. Give me prospects for veterans trades every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Much harder to do with a cap.

Playing with a salary cap is fun. It makes it that much harder to succeed with a team, knowing that you can only use X amount of space to fill the roster with good players.

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by TheMaus2

Playing with a salary cap is fun. It makes it that much harder to succeed with a team, knowing that you can only use X amount of space to fill the roster with good players.

How are the trades though? Do you get a lot of them that look like they're just balancing the money up, or are there any established player for prospect trades?

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by TheMaus2

It's his game though. And it's not like one team is playing all 162 games at home and another playing 162 on the road.

Of course its his game (and he can play it anyway he wants).

The original post asked about revenue sharing both in relation to OOTP and real life.

His post is clearly applicable to both. Note the communists comment, of which there aren't any in OOTP.

The comment on revenue sharing not helping poor teams may or may not be applicable to OOTP. However real life it probably doesn't much of the time as the owners (think Padres and Rays) just stick the money in their pocket.

Regarding your comment no team is playing 162 games on the road the fact is there is more money spent at a game at a big market team than a small market team. So letting everyone keep their own reduces revenue for small market teams since the visiting share of their gate is less than visiting share at a big market gate. So the value provided by the visitors is greater at big market locations.

It could be argued that the skill is the same so the pay should be the same. But reality is regardless of skill pay is limited by the value of the product produced. This is the basis of the concept that people are under employed.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Lordofbrewtown

I assume your asking because you don't care about 100% simulating MLB. I'm all for revenue sharing & no luxury tax. My theory is that you don't have a game if not for the other team(s). Personally, I think all types of revenues should be shared @ 50% (including local broadcasts & merchandise). The big market teams should still be at an advantage - as the 50% they keep is more than the 50% the smaller market teams keep.

As far as in OOTP, I have generally used simulations. Just trying my first fictional league now - through 1 year with 50% revenue sharing, and no problems yet (though it's very early in my experience using financials in the game).

Good approach.

[NoOne]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Without a visiting team there would be no game. The visiting team provides value to the event but you want it to provide that value for free.

a few steps further back... 81 home, 81 away games. Also, for every game you play at a teams stadium, they must play at yours. fair playing field from that perspective whether you share all or none.

Seems reasonable on its own to me. competing business entities, remember.

they fly in and play a child's game for 3 hours then impregnate some women from a local bar... rough day's work.

relative to all the work that goes into to maintaining a stadium, human resources, marketing, etc etc, the sum of the visiting team's contributing effort is a grain of salt in comparison to the amount of work the home team does to put on 81 games/yr.

remember MLB is a legalized cartel or collusion. Teams are independent business from each other... how many business do you know that share profits with their direct competition?

in a very small market you are incentivizing some bad behaviour. in some contexts, you can make more by spending less and milking the sharing for a larget net yearly gain. so, it's inevitable that some owners do this... previous florida marlins owner is prime example. (i don't think this was the motivation, i think that guy was just a putz when it came to competing/owning a baseball team)

[Rosco Peabody]

I'm still so undecided. i've gone back and forth with luxury tax and revenue sharing and nothing at all.

[Brad K]

There's really two things going on here, percentage of gate and general revenue sharing.

Concerning percentage of the gate for the visitors (and I believe this should apply to all other revenues generated at a game) the visiting team provides a service of great value and should be paid for that, just like any other vendor of services on game day would be paid. Let me add that this is nothing new. Despite the home and away argument the value of the service of the visiting team at a big market location is greater. Their talent is the same, but its the same as a bartender making more at a fancy bar than at a dive bar.

There seems to be difficulty with the concept that the same service/product is worth different amounts depending on context. Yet we all have experience with it, for example, that a bottle of water will cost more at a convenience store than at a grocery store. And despite that convenience stores sell a lot of bottled water.

Really, the same thing applies to star players. WHERE they play determines their value. Its not that small market teams can't afford star players... most teams make a good profit... but its that a star player doing the same thing has more value in a big market.

This portion is actually not revenue sharing but rather payment for value of services. And paying the visiting team for the value they provide has been going on almost forever. Rightly so.

Actual revenue sharing, that is, giving money to poorer teams because they are poor may work in OOTP - we'd have to know how the code is written - but probably doesn't work well in real life. The reason is giving a business money without an incentive or a requirement to spend it means the owners will probably stick it in their pockets. And as with the bottled water example, we have experience with this too.

After the economic crash ten years ago businesses were given money, like breaks on employment tax, with the idea they'd use the money to hire people. They didn't. Because a business doesn't hire someone it doesn't need just because it has some extra money. By 2012 the S&P 500 companies were sitting on the biggest pile of cash in their history. Because where there's demand, where there's a profit to be made hiring someone, companies will do it and can (unless there's rare situation of lack of capital, which hasn't been the case in a long time.) So the money gifts don't result in the desired behavior.

So revenue sharing as designed doesn't do much to make poor teams competitive on the field much of the time. It just redistributes the industry's profit. But it COULD increase on field competition if there was a requirement it be spent to improve the team. And better on the field competitiveness is good for the industry as a whole.

As far as teams competing against each other, they do in games but otherwise do not except in markets where there is more than one team looking for the consumer spending. In single team markets, financially, the teams are competing for the entertainment spending on all events in their area.

Yes, they compete against each other for players, but its not so much competing against each other as what the player is worth to the team, IOW, whether he can help the team make money by winning or by being popular (for the effect of a popular player putting fans in the stands, think Ralph Kiner in Pittsburgh in the 50s.)

So what does baseball (the industry) really need? Well, it needs some good teams that often win but enough other almost as good ones so there is some doubt about the outcome. And it can't have teams that are weak for decades at a time, so weak they can't draw either at home or on the road.

Unless baseball is going to get rid of the small market teams, it needs to improve them through revenue sharing that is structured so that recipients will spend the money on better teams.

Oh, and no DHs in the HOF. They're not real baseball players. <G>

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Mr. Marlin

I turn it off. If a franchise can't survive where it is on it's own I move it.

That could work real life too. I suggest moving the Rays to AAA.