Atlanta – In 2021, the Times columnist, Bill Plaschke, incurred Atlanta’s anger by blaspheminating the entertainment district surrounding the Braves stadium as a “sterile shopping center”. The district, called the battery, prefers the great descriptor of “the destination of a pre -eminent lifestyle of the South”.
Let’s walk around the battery, so that you can understand why it could become one of the flash points of the holy war to come between the owners and the players.
If you leave the stadium through the doors of the right field, you are in the battery. You will see a place in front of you, and around you places to set up a mechanical bull, bowl, navigate in a escape room or take a concert.
You can eat, drink, shop, dance, stay in a hotel. You can live here, in apartments above the windows. You can work here, in Office Towers, housed business giants.
“To create an environment where you can spend eight and nine hours on battery and field, and you always feel like you have all the time in the world, I think they have done a wonderful job to build this place,” said Freddie Freeman, the Dodgers and the former first goal player of the Braves All-Star.
Trist Park, home of the Braves d’Atlanta, is part of the battery, a mixed use area designed to be profitable for the team far beyond the MLB season.
The Braves built all of this, not only to attract fans to come early and stay late on match days, but to earn money from the property 365 days a year rather than 81. On this front, it is a spectacular success: nine million people come here each year, and the brave generated 67 million dollars of battery income last year.
According to managers of the major league, this is the model of the modern team. The angels had planned a ball of ball twice as large as the battery. Imagine what the Dodgers could build and how many income they could generate, on a property twice as large as the Angel stadium site.
And, speaking of income, Rob Manfred has something he likes to tell players about it. The MLB commissioner spoke during the day of investors of the brave last month and declared that he told players that their share of sports income rose from 63% in 2002 to 47% today.
Baseball is the only major sport in America without a salary ceiling system, in which the owners agree to spend a designated percentage of income on the wages of the players.
“If we had concluded an agreement 10 years ago to share 50-50, you would have won $ 2.5 billion more than you did,” Manfred told players in the comments reported for the first time by Sports Business Journal.
The players and their union rolled their collective eyes to these comments. It is no secret that many owners want a salary ceiling and the certainty of the costs that accompanies it.
“These are all the tactics,” said the Dodgers stars receiver Will Smith. “All this is to negotiate the first tricks.”
Said Corbin Carroll, the Voltigator of the Arizona Diamondbacks stars: “The owners do not want to put money in our pockets. In order for them to emphasize how we need it so much, there is a reason for that. ”
Tony Clark, union executive director, said the income figures that the league share with the union does not comply with Manfred’s statements. And, when you consider a percentage of income, you must define what matters as income: what’s going on in the pool to be shared with the players?
Tony Clark, Executive Director of the MLB Players’ Union.
(Brynn Anderson / Associated Press)
So let’s go back to the battery and the income opportunities that these stadium villages create for the teams.
A report published in April by Klutch Sports, the agency based in Los Angeles, called such villages “the growth engine of $ 100 billion in the sports industry”, especially when media revenues decrease. In the field to team owners: these villages “generate attractive financial yields that stand outside the requirements for sharing the league income”.
Translation: You can do all of these millions without sharing anything with the players.
Braves are built here because the team plays here. This is the new issue that is looming in the next series of collective negotiations: if a team is built around its stadium, should revenues be shared with the players?
“Oh yeah,” said the designated athletics striker, Brent Rooker. “Revenues are just any dollar that the teams bring that could ultimately be returned and used to put a better product in the field. It must include tickets, television, concessions, all things around the stadium. It must include all of this.”
Is the money that a team wins in offices outside the baseball stadium really relevant to the team?
Here is what the president and chief executive officer of Braves, Derek Schiller, spoke to ESPN of the battery: “You have a completely different set of real estate development which can then be deployed for the baseball team.”
I asked Clark if, if the negotiations turn to the possibility of sharing income in the sense that Manfred discussed, the money from the balls of the ball must be part of the conversation.
“Yes,” said Clark.
He refused to develop. Understand this about Clark: it can make an object of what can make a question yes or no in a monologue of 45 seconds without really answering yes or no. That he would say a clear “yes” and nothing else leaves no doubt about his position.
If the players ask that the owners share income from these stadium villages, the response would be predictable: first, we share baseball baseball income and real estate developments are not baseball operations. Second, if you want to share the income, you can also share the risk, helping to finance the construction of the ball village, for example, or assuming some of the losses when a tenant drops his lease and leaves stores or unoccupied office buildings.
Carroll said: “I think it is a conversation that will not need to occur, because it will not happen to this point. A salary ceiling is a non-bonor from the point of view of the union.”
Take advantage of the star match on Tuesday because this summer is that of relative peace. The collective negotiation agreement expires after next season, which means that rhetoric between players and owners should fly this time. If the owners insist on pushing a salary ceiling, a lockout would certainly follow.
And, if the owners push income sharing, the battery could provide the thrust of the recoil of the players.
