Overstating the windfall
Like many others, I’ve written that teams will have more money to spend this offseason because of the increase in annual national television revenue from $25 million to $52 million, starting in 2014.
Those numbers, however, are misleading; baseball does not distribute that money to teams in gross amounts, according to major league sources.
Instead, the sport redirects some of the revenue to everything from Major League Baseball Advanced Media to the players’ pension plan to expenses for the league offices in New York.
Teams actually received about $20 million per season under the old deal, not $25 million, the source said. The new number has yet to be determined, but it will be less than $52 million.
Just not as much as has been reported.