Last Week in Bizball: MLB Teams are Media Companies.

This week in “Last Week in Bizball”, MLB teams are media companies. These past handful of seasons, MLB attendance and regular season national TV ratings have been pretty much flat. The overall ratings trends for MLB’s marquee TV events, the ASG and WS, are clearly downward. MLB’s fan base is easily the oldest amongst the “big 4”. The building boom of retro/Americana/baseball-only stadia, which contributed greatly to increased industry revenues and franchise values, is well past its peak. Nonetheless, industry revenues remain at a record high of $7 billion annually. In addition, in 09, the Ricketts family paid a record amount for an MLB franchise when they acquired the Cubs, Wrigley Field and a minority stake in CSN Chicago for $800 million plus. That record amount is soon to be obliterated with the auctioning off of the Dodgers. If the sports biz punditry is correct, the sale price of the Dodgers will be in the neighbourhood of $2 billion. The sale of the Dodgers includes no additi...