With the 2022 MLB season on the brink of being pushed back and possibly locked out, there are winners and losers on both sides of the seemingly futile back and forth between millionaire players and billionaire owners.
Here’s my take on who are the biggest winners and losers of the upcoming MLB lockout.
Winner, Golf Courses: With no baseball on during the season why not spend more time at your local golf course swinging away and hitting the ball around. The major difference here is that a ball isn’t coming at you 95-100 mph.
Who wouldn’t want a chance to make a birdie or two?
Winner, NBA, and NHL: With MLB being in the middle of a cat fight between the players and the owners, the NBA and NHL have less competition on who views their programming in April and May if the lockout continues.
Those fans that would normally be watching a baseball game would be choosing either hockey or basketball. Winner, the weather for early games-Normally when the season starts, some of these games are played where it’s 30 or 40 degrees.
I’ve been to those games when the weather is like that, and the baseball field is the only green grass that I saw in the State of Minnesota one year.
The eagle even got confused and landed on some pitcher from the Seattle Mariners that game when it was super cold out. As the season gets delayed it’s less likely to have those cold weather games, which are harder to enjoy when baseball was meant for warmer temperatures in the middle of summer.
Winner, Movies and Music: With no MLB in the summer, people are going to be looking for things to do. Perhaps going to your local movie theater is an option. New movies are being released more frequently as the summer goes on so you may go see that movie that you’ve always wanted to see. Maybe your favorite band is on a tour which will give you that opportunity to see that favorite band of yours live.
Loser, The Players: If the players don’t play, they aren’t getting paid. The players may be entertaining the fans that attend the games. However, more importantly they are providing for their loved ones.
Loser, The Stadium Employees: When you visit the ballpark to catch a game, you witness an experience that is typically given to you by the ballpark staff. The ballpark staff is what makes attending baseball games memorable.
From Wally the Beer Man, to Kayla scanning in your ticket, every stadium operation starts with those folks, and there wouldn’t be a day at the ballpark without those folks from first pitch to the final out or walk off victory.
Loser, businesses around the ballpark: On Gameday the businesses around the ballpark get busier which means more revenue for the business owners who own those businesses. Most business owners rely on the additional revenue that the scheduled games generate for their place of business.
The owners of the MLB Clubs are also entrepreneurs so you would think that the MLB owners would want to see all their fellow entrepreneurs succeed as they are entrepreneurs themselves. Some of those businesses can lose 25% or more of their annual revenue because of smaller traffic patterns due to no baseball game.
Loser, T-Mobile: With T-Mobile, you have the MLB.TV subscription included with your T-Mobile service, with no MLB season there is no MLB.TV service with the T-Mobile plan which may be why some people stay with T-Mobile so that you can still watch all your favorite teams’ games living in an out of market area.
For example, being able to watch the Chicago Cubs in a Minnesota Twins market.
T-Mobile may lose subscribers for the specific reason that they don’t get the free MLB.TV deal anymore. Loser-The fans, if this isn’t the most obvious of the bunch, I don’t know what is. The fans are what makes this game the way that it is.
Without the fans there is no baseball.
The owners should be about the fans first instead of their pocketbooks. The fans tend to spend more on their ball clubs if they feel more appreciated, which automatically puts more money in the owners’ pocketbooks which in turn will put more money in the players pocketbooks as well.