Bill Veeck was 30 years ahead of his time. When he operated the St. Louis Browns in the 1950s, then the major leagues’ worst team on the field and at the gate, he told the owners of the New York Yankees that the Browns were entitled to 50 percent of the Yankees’ television revenue when they were the opposing team.
Said Veeck: “We’re half the show. They can’t play the game without us.”
Veeck was shouted down, of course, accused of heresy.
If Barnum Bill were alive today, he would be chuckling in his beer: More than a dozen big-league owners are now singing his song. They want an equal share of the home team’s television booty, especially from the big-market clubs that receive comparatively enormous sums for their broadcasting rights.
It’s all part of the owners’ revenue-sharing plan. They have approved the concept, but at a meeting last month in Kohler, Wis., the big-market moguls refused to agree on implementation: How much for how long? Though a formal vote was not taken, the head count was 18 clubs in favor and 10 against, three votes shy of approval.
And so last week came the revelation that the small-market owners, who include the required five franchises in both the National and American leagues, have resumed the attack. They have informed the league presidents they will refuse to renew the broadcasting agreement in effect since the mid-1950s.
More than likely it’s another threat of gamesmanship, designed to push the big markets into a fixed welfare arrangement that would result in a subsidy for their supposedly financially distressed partners.
A new broadcasting agreement would present interesting possibilities. If the threatened legislation is approved, permission to televise games would be required from both clubs, home or away. For example, the Twins, when playing the White Sox, would not be allowed to televise the action back to Minneapolis without the contractual right to show Sox images. And the game couldn’t be aired here without the Twins’ consent.
The old “you do my games and I do yours” no longer would exist.
The only games not affected next season would be cablecasts, the 75 games scheduled for ESPN and the 12 regular-season games and all postseason activity ticketed for ABC and NBC.
The new scenario could create a situation where each club would enter into separate negotiations with rival clubs. This would be particularly crucial for the clubs with the larger local broadcasting contracts such as the Yankees, New York Mets, Boston Red Sox, the Atlanta Braves and the Cubs.
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The small-market Seattle Mariners, for example, could agree to a deal with the Yankees. The Mariners could drive a hard bargain. Because they receive only $5 million in local broadcasting revenue, they have comparatively little to lose.
The Yankees, on the other hand, have lucrative local deals that add $47 million annually to their treasury. Their games against the Mariners may not draw much attendance. The bigger loss would be the television blackout. To prevent this, the Yankees and Mariners would have to negotiate a separate deal.
The Cubs and Braves, both linked to superstations and with heavy and financially rewarding television schedules, also could suffer. If the Pittsburgh Pirates refused a deal with the Cubs or Braves, or both, TBS, the Atlanta superstation, and WGN would lose considerable advertising income and also be forced into alternate programming.
“What has happened,” said a highly placed NL executive, “is that enough teams have said we want a new agreement.”
But the underlying motive is an attempt by the small markets to get a bigger slice of the pie, either directly from another club’s broadcasting fees or in a more subtle and hidden complex revenue-sharing program.
The belief here is that there will be no change in the existing television arrangements, but it seems likely the small and middle markets, using this threat as a bludgeon, will succeed in getting the 21-7 majority required to adopt a precise revenue-sharing formula.
Even so, there are knotty problems ahead, such as how long would the welfare state continue? Haywood Sullivan, owner/general partner of the affluent Red Sox, asked two weeks ago at the owners’ most recent meeting: “What I want to know is are we in for two years, three years or for life? Where does it end?”
There is also a larger and more immediate problem. The revenue-sharing concept, when approved by the owners, was joined at the hip with the specific stipulation it would be accompanied by a salary cap. So the whole thing is an exercise in futility. The players will not accept a cap, not until they are on the losing end of a long and acrimonious work stoppage.
If they only had listened to Barnum Bill.