Pittsburgh Pirates made 30 million last y ear?

its called monopoly folks, nothing like it anywhere...so please stop using terms like business model when you have no competition..

As a life long Pirates fan I couldnt agree with this statement more. Any player that hits above .280 is traded for 3 players to be named later. And so the cycle goes... They could give 2 shits about fielding a competitive team at least since the late 70's. As of last year I have turned my back on them & wont go back, untill more fans do the same they may have 100 sub .500 seasons in a row. Screw them, Go reds.

The Yankees should pay them since they use PIT (and other teams) as basically a glorified farm team.  I joke of course but basically that is what teams like PIT is though for MLB in generally and not NYY specifically.

Quote Originally Posted by jpero:



Still waiting for an answer.... Whether is Osirus, Sparky, Uriss, Stevebailey, any of the Yankee fans who cry about how the Pirates pocket their revenue sharing money.

yeah tell me too so i can relay it to the owner and save baseball in pittsburgh

LOL

Pirates have spent their revenue sharing money on the draft, building a baseball training facility in the dominican and other things, that the average fan doesn't see. 

They have sucked ever since the strike of 94(many teams have gotten lost in the financial system since then). It does look they have started to take the right steps in the last few years.

They had a great draft this year, that hopefully will show a few prospects soon. The Pirates are on their way to respectability, if not contending within 5 years. In this MLB economy unless you are a have, which the pirates are not, teams can't be built overnight.   

https://www.slate.com/id/2265068/pagenum/all/#p2

Let's start with a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation. Suppose the Pirates buy 20 more wins, for an additional investment of $100 million. According to the Deadspin docs, https://deadspin.com/5615094/pittsburgh-pirates-financial-documents/gallery/2 each season from ticket sales and concessions. In order to stay in the black, they'd need to increase that to $140 million. That would mean going from 20,000 fans per game to 70,000—which would be difficult, because PNC Park holds just 38,500 paying customers—and/or raising ticket prices. Would total box office revenues more than triple just because the team went from terrible to average? Doesn't seem likely.

By fortunate coincidence, we don't have to rely on a back-of-the-envelope calculation to see how this plays out in real life. One of Deadspin's other leaked reports belongs to https://deadspin.com/5619203/tampa-bay-rays-financial-documents/gallery/, for the exact two-year period in which the Rays jumped from worst to first in the American League. Tampa and Pittsburgh are roughly equal in market size—both teams earned between $130 million and $140 million in revenues per year, according to the leaked documents, and receive similar revenue-sharing payments from MLB. While we should be wary of drawing conclusions from a sample size of one, the experience of the Rays is nonetheless instructive.

In 2007, the Rays finished with the worst record in the American League; in 2008, they went 97-65 and made the World Series. If you thought this sudden improvement would have led to a huge jump in revenues, you'd be wrong. Excluding the playoffs, the team's revenues increased only slightly, from $134 million in 2007 to $143 million in 2008.

Why so small a bump? Ticket sales in 2008 jumped by only about $11 million, even though that represented a 40 percent increase. Concessions (including parking) more than doubled, a jump of $6 million. But offsetting those increases was the extra $20 million the Rays spent on player salaries. Yes, that's an amazing return—31 extra wins for less than $700,000 each—but it was enough to wipe out all $17 million in additional revenue. On top of that, the Rays' revenue-sharing and Central Fund payments dropped by $8 million in light of their newfound success.

As a result, Tampa Bay's regular-season operating income declined from $22 million in 2007 to less than $1 million in 2008—which means it cost the team $21 million to transition from cellar dwellers to World Series participants. As amazing as it seems, even after adding in $11 million in postseason earnings, the Rays were more profitable when they went 66-96 than when they went 97-65.

Based on these calculations, it seems unlikely that the Pirates will ever be able to turn a substantial profit while spending significant money on free agents. But as this year's standings prove, you don't need a massive payroll to win a lot of games—the cheapskate Padres, Rangers, Reds, and Rays are all great bets to make the playoffs.

How can you be so successful while spending so little money? Basically, you have to rely on young, cheap players. The Pirates appear to be moving in this direction; they have a significant minor league player development budget, and they don't appear to be shy about spending money to sign their draft picks.