A quick note on the business side of things
1 Comments Published by Colin Wyers on Friday, March 7, 2008 at 11:05 PM.
It's getting really late and I should be getting to bed soon, so I'm going to just hotlink this and deal with this tomorrow.
But TribCo VP/general council Crane Kenney, who's apparently been the Shadow Government of the Cubs for some time now, has sat down with the beat writers and gone over the myriad of business issues that face the club.
I'll be honest - I haven't had time to read all of these yet, just skim them. here's what sticks out at me at first glance:
- I still am far from thrilled with the angle the Sun-Times is taking on this; it's very tabloidy and sensational. Which, I suppose, is the Sun-Times for you.
- Apparently payroll is "north of $120 million;" I want to see how that matches up against what's been published. (I haven't updated my salary chart since mid-December, when the Cubs were right around $117 million.)
- The Cubs seem to be aggressively trying to find new revenue streams; they seem to want to push into Spanish-language radio broadcasts, for example.
- Kenney claims the Cubs are now actually more independent of TribCo than before, which seems to contract the surface impression but on second blush seems like a reasonable enough assertion.
All of this is going to bear more examination; hopefully I'll return to the topic tomorrow.
Labels: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Finances, Media
There's a couple different ways payroll are counted. The Tribune generally counts payroll as 2008 salary plus 2008 signing bonuses plus 2008 options declined (payout for those contracts). This is very different from how MLB uses payroll for luxury tax purposes. Instead of Zambrano getting a small amount this season, it's the average of his overall contract that counts. The Tribune, now that they've been sold, may have switched to this method.