Ouch !


Major League Baseball (MLB) just announced that it would play an abbreviated season this year. In 2020 instead of playing its usual 162 games, MLB will be playing a 60 game season. 

(Bear with me here because the following is going to involve math . . . a lot of math . . . but it will be worth it in the end.)

In California there are five MLB teams. Each team will have 30 home games in 2020, instead of the usual 81 home games. For the state of California that means 150 (5×30=150) MLB games total instead of 405 (5×81=405) in the state in 2020.

The average salary for a MLB player is $4.38 million! (This works out to be an average of approximately $27,000 per player per game [$4.38 M/162 games]). What few realize is that the players on the visiting teams pay state taxes on the amount that they earn for each game played in California. For ease of discussion, let’s ignore the salaries of the visiting manager and the coaches, etc., and just look at the MLB players.

Since the salaries of MLB players in 2020 will, for the most part, be prorated on a per game basis, this means that each of the 25 players on the visiting teams earns about $27,000 per game. This translates into $675,000 total for the team per game ($27,000×25=$675,000) in salaries paid to visiting players for each MLB game played in the state of California! Since there will be 255 (5x(81-30) less MLB games played in California this year. That means for visiting MLB teams there will be over $17 million less of earned California income this year. This translates into over $2 million less tax revenue for California for visiting MLB players alone!

Ouch!

The reduction in tax revenue from the 5 MLB teams based in California will be more than for the visiting teams. . . ancillary personal, concessions, parking, etc. This will amount to at least an additional loss of $3M in tax revenue compared to 2019! 

Double ouch!!

Next consider what will happen to tax revenues in California for pro-football if that season is shortened.

Triple ouch!!!

What about pro hockey (NHL) and pro basketball (NBA) . . . A Big Ouchie!

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