Baseball revenue sharing will increase by at least 16 percent to more than $300 million from this year's level through the 2006 season, the last under the new collective-bargaining agreement, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig told an audience at the SportsBusiness Journal/Octagon World Congress of Sports last Thursday.
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| Selig counting on more young fans. |
Gripping the podium like a preacher leaning on a pulpit, Selig spent much of his roughly 45-minute speech passionately extolling the virtues and graces of the game of baseball to the audience of several hundred industry leaders. He quoted poetry and baseball essays, and described the game as many purists do, as both science and mystery.
Almost grudgingly, he did turn his attention to baseball's troubled economic past and said the collective-bargaining agreement reached last August marked a great beginning for the sport.
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| More sharing |
| MLB Commissioner Bud Selig detailed last week how the amount of revenue sharing in the game has increased in recent years, adding that growth is expected to continue. Selig became commissioner in 1998, but had been chairman of baseball’s executive council since 1992. |
| Year | Amount |
| 2006 | More than $300 million* |
| 2003 | $258 million |
| 2002 | $169 million |
| 1996 | $50 million |
| 1992 | $20 million |
| * Estimate | |
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"Fifty years from now," he said, "[historians and fans] will point to this period as a turning point." And later to reporters, under the bright glare of TV cameras, he determinedly remarked, "This is our moment in history."
Selig pointed to MLB's new marketing task force as perhaps more important than the league's Blue Ribbon Commission, which produced the report that led to some of the revenue-sharing aspects of the new collective-bargaining agreement.
Only 22 percent of baseball's fans are African-American or Hispanic, the commissioner said, and he stressed the need to reach out to younger fans who all too often pursue other interests. "Baseball should have a wider appeal," he said.
MLB is opening a youth baseball academy in Los Angeles, and Selig reeled off a handful of other initiatives as evidence of the league's interest in younger fans.
He also disclosed that MLB in the next few years expects to create a World Cup on the model of soccer's worldwide tournament.
Selig took issue with critics who claim the new labor agreement does not do enough, saying that for the time being the labor pact achieved most of the league's urgent needs to help smaller-market teams.
