By Chad Fleming
Do you remember the days when a player made slightly more money than the average Joe and played professional sports as a means to make a modest living? I certainly don’t because it vanished long ago, before the new mega-stadiums were built to house as many fans as it could handle. Whatever happened to the dollar hot dog or the cheap seats in center field? Free Agency.
These days in sports, free agency dictates that big cities with a broad fan base should spend the most money and also, win the most championships and titles. Let’s take a look at professional baseball and the impact free agency has had on the success of small market teams as well big market teams. The greatest possible example of how free agency has changed Major League Baseball is the mere fact that a salary cap doesn’t exist. Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees is the ultimate money grabber. According to USA Today, he signed a ten year, 250 million dollar contract. We can put into perspective the massive contract by comparing his megadeal to the total payroll of another Major League team, the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 2007, the same year of the Alex Rodriguez deal, the Pirates total team salary was a mere fifty million. In other words, the Yankees paid half as much on one player as the Pirates paid for twenty five players.
When it comes to competition in Major League Baseball, there is a huge discrepancy between the big market teams like the Yankees and small market teams like the Pirates. Don’t get me wrong the Pirates can and do draft players who go on to be great, but with free agency, the team can simply not afford to compete with larger markets and offer a salary to keep a homegrown player in town. Every time I see an up and comer playing in a small market, I have to ask myself when they will be playing for the Yankee pinstripes.
Free agency is part of the business side of sports and has forever changed the way a franchise is operated as well as how much the fan has to spend to keep the operation running. A dollar hot dog is quite hard to find these days because the payroll an owner must pay to keep a team running smoothly has to be made up somewhere. Fans are now paying extra so that players make extra, and the cycle of ever-growing contracts will continue.
One part of free agency that often goes overlooked is the fact that because a player can negotiate with any team, they have a major advantage that helps drive a bidding war to obtain their services. One way to maximize the potential profits of free agency is to hire a well-known agent (lawyer) that knows the ins and outs of the process. Many agents in pro baseball are notorious for getting the maximum profit for players even if it’s at the detriment of a small market team. The most popular agent for the stars in baseball is named Scott Boras and he’s very well known for not letting his clients negotiate with their current team before they are able to become unrestricted free agents. By not letting his clients sign extensions to their contracts, he is starting the process of free agency so that the richest owners will have a chance to drive up the purchase price of his client.
Professional sports are entertainment and have been in the United States for a very long time. Every fan wants to see their favorite team win and are willing to pay top dollar to attend the games but there comes a point when the price is simply too much. The only way to curb the effects of free agency is for the fan to let their voices be heard and start boycotting any given
team or league. If there are fewer fans at games or less merchandise being bought at stores,
owners will notice when they have to pay more out of pocket to produce what the consumer likes to see.
Now that we’ve looked at professional baseball and the impact free agency has had on the sport, let’s look at the National Football League to see how they have tried to lessen the effects of free agency. First off, there is still no salary cap in the NFL but there is something known as the franchise tag. According to ehow.com, “Designating a player as a franchise player allows an NFL team to hold onto his contractual rights for the upcoming season”. The price to keep a player by using the franchise is steep, the tag requires the team to “retain their top players for a specified salary determined by the salaries of the top players at their positions” (Ehow). Free agency has negatively affected the NFL because small market teams must place a franchise tag on the most popular or productive player or risk losing them. Not only can a team franchise the player once but they can do it two years in a row to give them time to make plans for the future of the team.
This day and age, most sports fans are willing to pay the enormous prices to attend games which fuel the ever growing problem. Not until people start staying home and forcing the owners to lower prices, will the problem ever be addressed or fixed. One aspect that often goes overlooked is that sports are an entertainment that meets the needs of a specific consumer. If the consumer becomes unhappy with the product, they will simply become interested in another. Anecdote: Lower prices by reducing the outrageous contracts in free agency and sports will continue to thrive and grow.
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