Joseph Stalin once famously declared, “One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.” Perhaps he wasn’t just talking about people.
The bigger a number becomes, the less personal it feels, and when it becomes truly enormous, it is sometimes hard for us to even attempt to comprehend it. Suddenly it’s just a cold statistic that we journalists can use to pad out a story, but which really doesn’t add much meaning.
When you pay an average of $26.92 to get into a ballpark, and, once inside, get fleeced for around $5 just to buy a bottle of water — let alone a luxury item like a hot dog or even a beer — it hurts. Maybe the beer can take some of that pain away, but knowing that your team, in your house, is clearly taking advantage of your support and your wallet isn’t a nice feeling. Sure, you’re grown up now, and you can’t crash at Mom and Dad’s without contributing something toward the bills, but you don’t quite expect them to be taking you for a ride.
But when you see someone just walk in and throw $2 billion on the table to purchase an MLB franchise, as just happened with the Los Angeles Dodgers, it just doesn’t seem to register the same way.
First, let’s get this straight: $2 billion is not “a lot of money.” It’s far more than that. It’s an incomprehensible amount of money. Try and think of it this way: If it turned out the price tag was actually $2.01 billion, would you be significantly more impressed? No. But that is an extra $10 million, a quantity on its own that few of us, even Stanford graduates, will get to see in our lifetimes.
And what could $2 billion buy you? A struggling baseball team, obviously, but also around eight million tons of ballpark hot dogs, 1.6 million barrels of ballpark beer or an entire stadium’s worth of MLB tickets for 10 consecutive seasons.
The biggest question, though, about this quantity of money is whether it is really worth it. What is the Guggenheim Baseball Management group really getting for the price tag?
Bought by Frank McCourt in 2004 for $355 million, the Dodgers were valued at $727 million by Forbes in 2010, less than half of the aforementioned purchase. Remember, too, that we are talking about a team struggling with bankruptcy — the existing debt is greater than the price paid in 2004 — and without a World Series appearance for more than 20 years. If the Dodgers are worth this much, what would a team like the Yankees cost?
And can the new owners really make this investment pay off? Television rights and real estate development may go a long way toward that goal, but the physical price of the franchise must at least remain at the same level to make this work.
Arguably the biggest soccer club in the United Kingdom, Manchester United was bought for nearly $1.5 billion by the Glazer family in 2005. Even that was a significantly smaller sum than we are talking about right now, for a team and a sport that have far greater global appeal than the Dodgers or baseball. And has it worked? Although the team looks certain to win the Premier League yet again this year, it is now saddled with around the $1 billion in debt.
Right now we are still trying to pull ourselves out of a deep hole created in part by the hyperinflation of house prices. Has baseball not been paying attention?
I honestly don’t understand how this valuation can be correct, or in fact good, for either the sport or the fans. This $2 billion isn’t going to provide new facilities, train new players or even make the game-day experience more enjoyable or affordable. There is, really, just one small group that benefits: the other 29 MLB franchise owners. If the going rate of a team keeps rising, then they can feel certain that, win or lose, invest in the team or not, their perceived assets will continue to grow.
At least, that is, until the music finally stops. When the baseball bubble bursts, someone is set to lose an inconceivable amount of money.
Please note that Tom Taylor never said that Man U’s debt made him upset. Ask him how he really feels about soccer’s most popular squad at tom.taylor “at” stanford.edu.