MLB answered critics of its aging fanbase and media challenges with its strongest revenue year to date.

The league reportedly earned more than $10.8 billion in 2022, edging out its previous record of $10.7 billion in 2019.

• Last season began a new set of media rights deals with Fox, TBS, and ESPN that collectively pay $1.8 billion per year. The trio’s previous deals brought in $1.5 billion annually.
• New streaming deals with Apple and NBC’s Peacock added $115 million per season.
• Sponsorship deals brought in $1.2 billion, up 5.6% from the year before.

The league’s attendance of 64.6 million showed a 42.3% increase from the pandemic-affected 2021 but was the lowest figure since 1997, other than 2020 and 2021. 

The 2022 season was delayed by a 99-day lockout as players and owners negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement.

Attendance slipped each year from 2012’s 74.9 million to 2019’s 68.5 million.

Patching Up

Teams will have an additional revenue stream in 2023 when the league begins allowing deals for sponsored uniform patches.

The league is also instituting changes intended to speed up the game and generate more excitement, including a pitch clock, restrictions on defensive shifts, and changes to encourage stolen base attempts.

Oakland whiffed on what may have been a key source of funding to help the city keep the A’s.

The city will not receive any funding from the Department of Transportation’s Mega grant program. 

The team has agreed to fund the construction of a $12 billion waterfront development centered on a new stadium, but has sought public funds for the surrounding infrastructure.

• The city had applied for $182 million toward infrastructure improvements for roads, train tracks, and pedestrian walkways around the Howard Terminal area, where the A’s are looking to build.
• Oakland said it has been awarded $375 million in transportation grants and has applied for an additional $55 million in regional grants, $25 million from other federal sources, and $60 million from state grants.
• Oakland could also raise funds through a $150 million limited-obligation bond.

Sheng Thao, who was sworn in as Oakland mayor on Tuesday, has stated that she wants to strike a deal with the team that will grow the city’s revenue, “activate the Jack London Square area,” and protect residents from costs and pollution associated with the project.

Vegas Side Bet

The A’s continue to explore alternative options in Las Vegas.

Talks regarding Phil Ruffin’s Las Vegas Festival Grounds have dried up, according to Ruffin’s spokesperson.

That potentially leaves just the Tropicana site, owned by Bally’s. The team and Bally’s — which holds naming rights to 14 MLB teams’ regional sports networks — have been in negotiations on a $1 billion domed stadium.

DAZN is paying the price for its deep investment in soccer rights.

The sports streaming platform sustained an operating loss of $1.36 billion for 2021 and an overall loss of $2.3 billion.

The losses, which CEO Shay Segev primarily attributed to the addition of Italian and German soccer rights, outweighed DAZN’s $1.56 billion in revenue that year — a 79% year-over-year increase. 

• In 2022, revenue increased to $2.3 billion.
• DAZN has lost more than $6 billion since its 2016 launch.
• In 2021, billionaire owner Len Blavatnik agreed to a recapitalization of DAZN, dropping its net debt to $14.3 million at year’s end, compared to $1.3 billion the year prior.

Segev said an IPO could happen in the next two or three years, and that the company would be open to strategic investors.

“I really don’t have any preference, I would just think that it actually makes sense for this to become a public company,” he said. “The Netflix story, the Amazon story — I think DAZN is going there as well.”

DAZN Down

DAZN’s $2.7 billion deal to air Serie A in Italy for three seasons has come with other problems.

The service has experienced several outages, drawing criticism from viewers. On Tuesday, DAZN agreed to take steps to fix the problems, including offering affected subscribers a refund and setting up a Network Operation Centre in Italy.