Revenue sharing

Well here it is…. I think this will be a big boost for the league, and should make for a more competitive league. In my opinion this coming offseason is the perfect time to put this into place, and I’m glad the vote earlier in the season reflected that people were ready for this change. The main reason this is a good time to put this in place is the Yankees themselves. This plan will affect them the most, and they are currently without an owner. In addition they have a 180 million dollar payroll, will probably make 280 million or so this season. This will leave them with plenty of cash to be paid into the revenue sharing plan. In addition they will have 90 million in expiring contracts. Whoever the new owner will have plenty of flexibility to maintain the Yankees as a premier team in this league.

Here is what I will do over the rest of this post. Part will be a link to the full spreadsheet that details the plan (probably added at a later time), part of the post will be what we will do this offseason, and part will be what we will be doing in the coming seasons. What I think is great about this plan is it is flexible. What I mean is it can easily be tweaked depending on what issues need to be addressed in the league. The potential/current issues I am thinking of are the following: extreme differences in revenue between small and large market teams, extremely high payroll, and a large amount of cash on hand for teams. At this time the last two aren’t really an issue. The first is, so that is what this plan will focus on.

For now I will stick to general numbers. I’ll work the details out tonight or tomorrow, but this will give some time for feedback. The plan I detailed last offseason was setup to get all teams to a range of between 70 million and 150 million. This plan looks at revenue for the season after it's completed, and payroll on August 1st, basically right after the trade deadline. I am building this as a 3 step plan, but that does not mean it will be done in three years, or even last 3 years. Basically after each season it would be an offseason topic, so that would mean it would be up for vote each season. The vote would be to keep at the same level another season, increase the revenue sharing to the next step, scale back the revenue sharing, or discontinue all together. There would be rules in place along the way so this does not dramatically harm one of the large market teams. The point is for them to have to scale back over time, not screw them in the short term.

Okay so on to this coming offseason. My current plan is to loosely follow the plan I had from last year, with a slightly larger amount being taken from the Yankees. This will probably be around 100 million, depending on how they do in the playoffs with ticket sales. This is probably a little more than I had them contributing for the first year when I talked about this last year, but their current roster, owner, and cash situation should mean this will be no problem for whoever the new owner is. They will be left with 25 – 30 million in cash. This should be plenty considering they will be losing so much payroll this season. The Mets will be the only other team with much of a change, paying somewhere around 20million. They are on pace for a historical high revenue wise, so I don’t believe they will be greatly impacted either, and this is only 10 million or so more than they paid last year. On the other side the smaller teams such as KC will receive as much as 15 million. I will add some initial estimates for this later tonight or tomorrow as well.

Going forward after this offseason all teams will need to start planning for this and how it will affect their team. I will post on a regular basis throughout the season projected revenue sharing numbers for the upcoming offseason. Instead of large market teams planning to stay above breaking even they will need to plan to stay above the amount of revenue sharing they are responsible for paying. On the flip side teams receiving revenue can not count on receiving that same amount in the future. If the plan is discontinued in the future you’ll need to adjust, so don’t go crazy with the cash on hand you have or money you may or may not receive in the future.

Just a few things to help this get into place….

As I mentioned this plan can be voted on after each season.

For this coming offseason and next offseason a team paying into the revenue sharing plan cannot be left with less than 15 million in cash. For instance I believe St. Louis (and 2 or 3 other teams that would have to pay) will end up with less than 10 million at season’s end, so they will be exempt. This rule basically gives teams 2 offseasons to plan for this. After that if you do not have enough cash you will be put into the red, meaning you are in debt and will have to follow the contract and free agent rules for teams in debt.

An exception to this would be the following. Since this is a phased in approach, for each 7.5 million dollar increase in your revenue sharing over the previous season you will be allowed to drop one pre-revenue sharing contract at no cost. There’d be a limit of 2 per offseason. If you signed a player after this plan is introduced you’ll have to pay them off or figure out a way to trade them to improve your financial situation.


Those are my thoughts for now. I'm hurrying a little so I can do the sim before I play basketball, but I will add any other thoughts and the actual numbers and spreadsheet link later.

This post details the numbers of the plan. First this plan has been revamped a little bit. Basically the Yankees being made available to a new owner, their current financial situation, and their 90 million in expiring contracts is the reason for this. Basically I have excelerated their part of plan, meaning they will contribute more in the first few steps than in my plan last year.

Also instead of saying after 2009, after 2010, etc. I've changed the tabs on the spreadsheet to step 1, step 2, step 3. As I mentioned the progression rate or discontinuance of this plan will be voted on each year.

One last thing... these numbers and calculations are by no way fixed. I've said all along I wanted to get team revenue for all teams between 75 million and 155 - 160 million. These figures are based on this years revenue and salary info. I think once small market teams start spending more their revenue numbers and team salary will rise naturally. That's my opinion on how Mogul works though so I'm not sure. My plan was more based on how to get to the ending revenue number that's to the far right of each tab for each team at that step of the plan. More specifically the top 2 or 3 and bottom 2 or 3 revenue teams.

OK, spreadsheet will be below, but for this upcoming offseason here is what it looks like it will be for now. Remember, one stipulation was that in the first two years no team would be taken below 15 million in cash due to revenue sharing, so that's why a few teams pay zero. These are my estimates for year ending revenue, so these numbers could change.


TEAM_____ __________ REVENUE________ PAYROLL________ REVENUE SHARING
New York A __________ 294.2 __________ 185.6 __________ -94.784
New York N __________ 189.9 __________ 139.4 __________ -19.835
St. Louis _____________ 132.1 __________ 115.4 __________ 0.000
Seattle ______________ 119.7 __________ 77.3 __________ -3.613
Boston ______________ 117.7 __________ 97.8 __________ -3.353
San Francisco _________ 115.4 __________ 96.8 __________ 0.000
Detroit ______________ 113.1 __________ 105.8 __________ 0.000
Chicago N ____________ 108.5 __________ 91.5 __________ -2.157
Toronto ______________ 107.9 __________ 89.4 __________ 0.000
Atlanta ______________ 95.9 __________ 91.5 __________ -0.519
Minnesota ____________ 94.2 __________ 80.8 __________ -0.298
SHARED REVENUE POOL
Philadelphia __________ 90.2 __________ 92.3 __________ 0.351
Baltimore _____________ 87.1 __________ 46.7 __________ 1.007
Washington __________ 86.9 __________ 56.1 __________ 1.050
Los Angeles N ________ 75.9 __________ 84.2 __________ 3.606
Los Angeles A ________ 75.1 __________ 72.4 __________ 3.808
Houston _____________ 73.8 __________ 55.9 __________ 4.142
Arizona ______________ 69.7 __________ 70.7 __________ 5.245
Colorado ____________ 69.5 __________ 35.5 __________ 5.301
Texas _______________ 69.4 __________ 45.9 __________ 5.329
Oakland _____________ 67.9 __________ 47.5 __________ 5.755
Cincinnati ____________ 66.1 __________ 24.4 __________ 6.283
Cleveland ____________ 64.9 __________ 77 __________ 6.646
Chicago A ____________ 62.2 __________ 25.8 __________ 7.495
San Diego ____________ 55.7 __________ 30 __________ 9.768
Pittsburgh ____________ 52.7 __________ 13.3 __________ 10.951
Milwaukee ____________ 52.4 __________ 16.9 __________ 11.075
Tampa Bay ___________ 50.7 __________ 52.2 __________ 11.797
Florida ______________ 50.3 __________ 65.1 __________ 11.972
Kansas City __________ 48.1 __________ 32.1 __________ 12.976




On to the plan in the years to come. This plan can be found here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WQBDME4U

Or I can email or file transfer to you. If this doesn't work when downloaded please let me know.

My mogul computer is being checked for a virus right now, so are these rev numbers based on current numbers or "predicted" numbers...

these are numbers I got by simming through the end of the year. So I think a little better than the projected number, but still subject to change, especially for playoff teams depending on how they do.

Once again these are approximate #'s. I won't know the final #'s for sure until the playoffs end. You should get within a 25% range of these numbers. There is another issue that will be proposed in the next few days that could affect this, but I think that is still a big enough window to cover that.

OK.... these are "final" numbers.... I'm listing each teams current cash, revenue sharing amount, and adjusted cash after this. If you have any questions let me know.... I will be working with tunit to get this into a game file and get the game file adjusted.


TEAM___________ Current Cash___________ Pd/Rcvd Rev Sharing___________ Adjusted Cash
New York A ___________ 134.100 ___________ -100.6 ___________ 33.500
New York N ___________ 62.200 ___________ -20.3 ___________ 41.900
St. Louis ___________ 11.200 ___________ 0.0 ___________ 11.200
Chicago N ___________ 18.300 ___________ -2.0 ___________ 16.300
Boston ___________ 28.400 ___________ -3.2 ___________ 25.200
Seattle ___________ 36.300 ___________ -3.1 ___________ 33.200
Toronto ___________ -1.300 ___________ 0.0 ___________ -1.300
Detroit ___________ 17.900 ___________ -2.9 ___________ 15.000
Atlanta ___________ 17.800 ___________ -0.4 ___________ 17.400
San Francisco ___________ 6.800 ___________ 0.0 ___________ 6.800
Minnesota ___________ 33.000 ___________ -1.4 ___________ 31.600
Philadelphia ___________ 0.500 ___________ 0.3 ___________ 0.800
Baltimore ___________ 22.800 ___________ 1.0 ___________ 23.800
Washington ___________ 21.800 ___________ 2.2 ___________ 24.000
Los Angeles N ___________ -27.200 ___________ 3.5 ___________ -23.700
Los Angeles A ___________ 24.400 ___________ 4.3 ___________ 28.700
Houston ___________ 19.500 ___________ 4.1 ___________ 23.600
Arizona ___________ 14.900 ___________ 5.7 ___________ 20.600
Colorado ___________ 7.400 ___________ 5.8 ___________ 13.200
Texas ___________ -6.400 ___________ 5.6 ___________ -0.800
Oakland ___________ 20.200 ___________ 6.3 ___________ 26.500
San Diego ___________ -46.200 ___________ 10.6 ___________ -35.600
Cleveland ___________ -1.000 ___________ 7.0 ___________ 6.000
Florida ___________ 23.600 ___________ 12.7 ___________ 36.300
Cincinnati ___________ 26.500 ___________ 6.6 ___________ 33.100
Chicago A ___________ 20.100 ___________ 8.2 ___________ 28.300
Pittsburgh ___________ -23.800 ___________ 11.7 ___________ -12.100
Milwaukee ___________ 27.400 ___________ 11.9 ___________ 39.300
Tampa Bay ___________ 30.700 ___________ 12.5 ___________ 43.200
Kansas City ___________ 47.000 ___________ 13.8 ___________ 60.800