The MLBPA Executive Director told Boardroom that he may try to tie revenue sharing with wins in the next CBA negotiations.
Major League Baseball attendance and TV viewership are up this year after more people attended games in 2024 than in any season since 2017. Following an action-packed All-Star Week in Atlanta, baseball is riding a wave of positive momentum as we enter the season’s second half.
Yet, the sport is preparing for a deadline that could derail the growth MLB has worked so hard to develop. The current collective bargaining agreement expires on Dec. 1, 2026, and MLB owners, led by Commissioner Rob Manfred, and the MLB Players Association, led by executive director Tony Clark, are already preparing their sides for divisive negotiations that could potentially lead to a work stoppage that would be critically damaging and detrimental to what the game’s been building toward.
“The league has come out and said they were going to lock us out,” Clark told Boardroom on Monday night at the annual Players Party hosted by the MLBPA, Fanatics, Topps, and Lids. “We’re going to do what we always do, which is get to the bargaining table and negotiate in good faith with the hope of finding common ground on a fair and equitable deal. If the league is not interested in that, then the lockout is what they profess they’re interested in. But we’re focused in on getting a deal.”
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As we’re just over 16 months from the CBA’s expiration, Clark said the PA is currently meeting with players from around the league to discuss their priorities and the biggest issues they’d like to bring to the negotiating table. There will then be a meeting with the executive board after the season that will set the stage for real negotiations when they begin in the spring.
A major sticking point Clark wanted to address from the outset was the on-field competition. While he didn’t name any names, it’s clear that some teams haven’t fully focused on putting winning products on the field. Five teams have payrolls under $100 million this season, and three of those teams have among the five worst records in the league in 2025. Of the 18 teams over the last three years with sub-$100 million payrolls, including this season, per Spotrac, only five had records above .500.
“What players are focused on is competition on the field where all 30 teams are committed to putting the best team on the field that they possibly can,” Clark said. “At its core, competition is key.”
“We do have fans in a significant number of our markets who are really concerned about the issue of competitive balance and the competitiveness of the teams in their markets,” Manfred told CNBC Sport earlier this week. “It’s something we’re going to have to pay attention to.”
Despite having among the lowest payrolls over the last three years, the Pittsburgh Pirates reportedly lost money last year due to low ticket and concession revenues, as well as a local TV deal that generates relatively little revenue despite being one of the biggest beneficiaries of MLB revenue-sharing dollars. The Minnesota Twins have a healthy payroll of just over $145 million, but their reported $425 million in debt and a poor local TV deal have kept the team from selling. Local TV revenue is an issue that Manfred and the league said they’re addressing, as most of the regional and national contracts are up after 2028.
If teams that benefit from revenue sharing the most still have among the lowest payrolls, perhaps, Clark said, it’s time to tweak the system, perhaps somehow tying revenue sharing dollars to wins on the field.
“One of the key economic pieces of our system is revenue sharing and how the system itself works,” he continued, “but having a revenue sharing system that incentivizes winning every next game and putting the best team on the field makes a lot of sense.”
One way the owners may propose to fix revenue sharing and increase competition is by instituting a salary cap, something the players are opposed to and have successfully avoided in previous CBA negotiations.
“We don’t believe salary caps are good for players or are good for the game,” Clark said. “We believe salary caps are actually anti-competition. There are ways to improve our systems without a restriction of player compensation.”
Manfred also told CNBC that owners have not yet voted or decided on what they’ll propose for the next CBA, including a salary cap.
“Whatever we propose, whether it’s a salary cap or something else,” he said, “it’s incumbent upon us to convince the players that if we’re going to change the system, the change will have benefits for everybody. And the effort to take a particular issue out of play before we even go to the table is an unfortunate position that they’ve taken.”
Both sides seem to be hunkering down for a long, contentious fight. Curtis Granderson, a former prominent PA representative when he played, who is now an analyst for TNT Sports, laid out the stakes here quite succinctly.
“Come 2027, there has to be baseball on opening day,” he told Boardroom at the Players Party. “We can’t afford to have a lockout or strike. Attendance is up, viewership is up, youth participation is up. It may not be pretty, but they need some sort of agreement for Opening Day.”
If not, baseball risks undoing all the hard work that has led it to this point.
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