Bluesky

Kyle Tucker was the last straw. If we are to believe the flurry of reports after the Los Angeles Dodgers signed the free-agent outfielder on January 15, 2026, Major League Baseball’s ownership class saw the Dodgers’ latest edition as an existential threat to the game—or at least their financial stakes in it.

The Dodgers were already spending more than half a billion dollars on salary between player compensation and luxury tax penalties, eclipsing the second-highest spending team by nearly $100 million. The MLB is the last major American sport without a salary cap, allowing players to make top market value unbound by restrictions set by the league. So the only thing stopping the Dodgers from adding another bat, along with star closer Edwin Diaz, was ownership group Guggenheim Partners’ willingness to spend.

Right now, baseball’s national and global popularity is once again ascending. On the backs of mega-stars like Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, the MLB has recovered from the steroid scandals of the early 2000s. It helped that the pitch clock shortened a game that many fans felt was bloated. Given a few more years of momentum, baseball could reach heights of popularity it hasn’t seen since Derek Jeter was winning World Series rings for the New York Yankees.

But the league is willing to put all that at risk to force labor to come to heel. As the billionaires begin asserting their power over players and fans, it’s worth asking whether these failsons and finance brokers actually like the game the fans hold dear. The answer seems clear, no matter what their PR-filtered statements say. Why else would owners be willing to destroy the game to fatten their wallets?

Sports ownership is one of the most stable investments for multimillionaires and billionaires in the United States. Franchise valuations, especially NBA and NFL teams, are skyrocketing. The NFL is a juggernaut willing to destroy everything in its path. The Seattle Seahawks, fresh off a Super Bowl winning season, are currently on the market, with bids estimated to eclipse the record $6.05 spent by Josh Harris and company spent acquiring the Washington Commanders. The Los Angeles Lakers sold for $10 billion in 2025 and are now under the same ownership as the Dodgers.

As the valuations of NBA and NFL teams continue to rise, baseball owners have looked on in contempt. The average franchise valuation has increased 59 percent for NFL teams and 87 percent for NBA teams in the past three years, while MLB teams have grown at what owners see as a paltry 25 percent. Only the Yankees and Dodgers crack the top 50 of Forbes’s most valuable franchises, while 30 of the 32 NFL teams made the list. The Minnesota Twins struggled to find investors last year after the children of former owner Carl Pohlad helped sink the club into $500 million in debt. Nine franchises lost their local television broadcast rights after FanDuel Sports Network and parent company Main Street Sports went bankrupt.

The billionaires are angry, and they’re willing to sacrifice the 2027 season to get what they want. And what they want is a hard salary cap. They’re prepared to spin the salary cap as a win for fans, a way for every team to vie for a World Series ring by leveling the playing feel. Throughout the 2026 season, this spin will come directly from the team owners like the Angels’ Arte Moreno, who recently said, “Winning doesn’t seem to be a top five priority for our fans.”

The Major League Baseball Players’ Association, the union representing the players, seems unwilling to bend to the idea that players should take pay cuts to increase owners’ investments. The players and their labor are the reasons fans show up to the games or turn on the television. They’re the stars whose physical sacrifices should be rewarded with the lion’s share of revenues.

The players know their power, and they’re willing to fight the greed of owners. During the 2025 season, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred visited every clubhouse in preparation for a contentious labor dispute once the 2026 season ended. The players were already planning for a delayed 2027 season, unwilling to entertain the idea of a salary cap, but Manfred was determined to broach the subject. When he met with the Phillies midway through last year’s season and tried to bring up what he tried to sell as the positives of a salary cap, All-Star first baseman Bryce Howard chirped back, telling Manfred to “get the fuck out of our clubhouse.”

One thing cannot be made too clear: The value of a franchise is not the responsibility of labor, nor should it be the concern of fans. Sports franchises are private businesses, but they extract heavy tax relief and local public funds every time a billionaire owner doesn’t want to pony up for a new stadium. And when they don’t get their way, owners can sometimes pack up and leave town for a city that will. The Oakland A’s are no longer an Oakland franchise because owner John Fisher couldn’t wrest enough money from the city for a new stadium. So Fisher, who made his money the traditional way (by inheriting billions from his father, the founder of GAP), is in the process of moving the team to Las Vegas. There, he will be lavished with $382 million in public funding to build the stadium of his dreams.

American professional leagues have federal antitrust exemptions that have traditionally allowed owners to run roughshod over on-field labor. In 1922, the Supreme Court ruled that since baseball was a local enterprise and not subject to interstate commerce, it was exempt from the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. Owners used their status to limit player movement and outlaw free agency until 1976. The exemption essentially allowed owners to create what Ohio Senator Howard Metzenbaum called a “legally sanctioned, unregulated cartel” during a Senate hearing in 1992.

The kind of socialism-for-the-wealthy franchise owners enjoy is old hat in the United States. Owners claim sports are a public good, bring up the thoroughly debunked argument that their teams and their stadiums create sufficient jobs and economies to make up for what they take, then bilk public purses for everything they can.

I live in Philadelphia, a city with a deep and passionate relationship with its teams. When the Eagles trounced the Kansas City Chiefs in 2025, more than half a million people flooded Broad Street to climb light poles, jump on trash trucks, and celebrate with fans and strangers alike. Phillies games are at or near capacity most seasons. And if you can’t find a ticket, every bar will have the game on, and every bartender will have an opinion on Trea Turner’s odds of winning MVP or where Nick Castellanos can shove his $20 million buy-out. The city is known for its rough and passionate fans, but the language of fandom permeates everything about the city. A friend in the poetry scene here told me “Go Birds” is now a favorite sign-off of local poets. At their best, sports can create community, a shared language crafted to unite people even for the briefest moments.

Owners, media executives, and gambling companies are doing everything they can to rip sports out of communities, making it harder for fans to afford tickets and watch the games they love. When they do watch, fans are inundated with gambling commercials, social-media ads, and banners digitally placed behind home plate. These digital banners are often in the line right behind home plate, making it easier to see tonight’s parlay lines than the arc of a well-crafted curveball.

Even as the rich make it more expensive to enjoy baseball (or anything else in this country), they will still rely on fans to side with them during next year’s lockout. As the season begins, players already know spring training will be delayed in 2027 as the two sides battle for a new contract. Cheaper owners like Bruce Sherman of the Miami Marlins and Bob Nutting of the Pittsburgh Pirates, whose teams are perennial bottom feeders both in the standings and in the way they pay their players, will cry poor in the face of the big bad Dodgers.

The billionaires that make up the MLB boardroom will do everything they can to sway public opinion, and too many fans will take their side. Kyle Tucker could have been a star on their team if only revenue were more evenly split. The Dodgers will be the punching bag throughout the year, especially if the team gets off to another hot start. But why? Yes, the Dodgers have the highest payroll in baseball, but they also invest in their minor league franchises and development program. In a league where cheap owners abound, money and competence are the ultimate marginal gain.

If ownership wins, it may be because they convince enough fans the opposite is true. American baseball fans are whiter and more conservative than NBA or NFL fans. Only the NHL has a higher number of fans identifying as Republican. The league will exploit the more monolithic nature of its customers. It’s not hard to imagine both owners and the fans who side with management targeting a labor class that is largely and proudly Latino.

Baseball players are well-paid over their short careers. Fans often look at the astronomical salaries of Juan Soto or Shohei Ohtani and feel no relationship with what can be perceived as a life of luxury. But the average MLB career lasts 2.6 years and the precarity of most athletes will only exacerbate if owners can sharply limit player earnings. Precarity is the common denominator of labor in this country, and siding with any billionaire over any fight to make working conditions worse should be met with collective shaming.

So, do owners like the game? In the end, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is their willingness to destroy everything to get their way. The 2026 season could be one for the ages. We are witnessing the dominance of an international superstar in Shohei Ohtani, who continues to improve the game’s international reputation and domestic fanbase. The owners want to take that all away to make themselves a little richer, and the fans will suffer for it.