Baseball
...ers. The cap would be equal for all teams. The manager of the New York Mets, Steve Phillips, says that "there are certainly some small-market teams and middle market clubs that have found ways to compete. Yet, there is a correlation, a direct correlation, between payroll and winning"(Klis 2). So if baseball could set a salary cap that would be equal for all teams, all would have to stay under, then that would help give teams a better opportunity to compete. Under this cap, each team would have the same opportunities to sign free agents, which would help to put baseball in the right direction. A salary cap could be a good first step, but to continue in this direction we must look at revenue sharing. Revenue sharing is when the teams in the league share some of the profits they make with each other. National TV revenue, team licensing on apparel and merchandise, ticket sales, concessions and many more things that could be shared under a revenue sharing plan. In Clark C. Griffith's speech to the Revenue Sharing Panel he talked to the panel about the revenue sharing plan possibilities and how it would help the game. Mr. Griffith said that revenue sharing exists in every league in various forms, and is always debated at every league meeting baseball has. Major League Baseball has gradually increased its revenue sharing. But the growth of unshared local revenues has grown faster than shared revenue, which have caused a problem for smaller teams. The National Football League has significant revenue sharing between teams and that has made the league very successful. The need for the nearly equal distribution of players among teams, is the basic reason for increased revenue sharing, because an imbalance damages each game's value. The teams in baseball have the privilege of being in the league. Baseball must move to develop a system that provides a proper distribution of revenue so that every one can prosper (Griffith 2-4). The speech that was given by Mr. Griffith explains why revenue sharing is a smart idea for all of baseball. By pooling money as a league all teams would be able to compete on a higher level causing more overall outside interest in baseball. If baseball as a whole were more competitive then it would be more prosperous as well, a sure result of the greater fan interest. On the other hand, some people disagree with revenue sharing. They say that each team should be on its own to develop and turn into a winning ballclub. Bottom club owners want revenue sharing, "but it would be unimaginable for competitors in other industries to reach an agreement that would help smaller competitors. In a free enterprise system, companies want to run their competitors out of business," rather than to help them perform better (Greenhouse 2). However baseball needs to be competitive for the fans. In order to do this each team in baseball has to help each other out. Michael Mandel brought up a far simpler idea on how to help solve the problem of competitive balance. His idea involved putting a third Major League team in the New York area. There are currently two teams that play in New York. The New York area accounts for 10% of the country's personal income by itself giving the New York teams an enormous advantage in having a richer fan base. "A richer and broader fan base means more TV money and more cash to spend on players, leading a to competitive advantage"(Mandel 1). Adding a third team by either expansion or by moving a team from a smaller region would provide more competition for TV and fan dollars for the two New York teams. Creating another team in New York would "substantially reduce the Yankees' economic edge without creating complicated tax or revenue-transfer mechanisms"(Mandel 1). Creating another team in New York would also go a long way toward restoring competitive balance across the entire league. The New York teams are the only teams in the last 10 years to have a winning percentage of .561 compared with the next 10 biggest economic bases, which have a winning percentage of only .497 over the same stretch. Adding another team in New York would help the competitiveness of everyone outside of New York. It might hurt the New York teams at first but once they settled in to the new situation they would recover. The New York teams would still have a higher fan revenue base than every other team in baseball (Mandel 1-2). To help with the problem of lower fan bases for smaller teams, baseball could institute a commissioner's discretionary fund. Teams in the lower half of the rankin...