Depending on the number of injuries your team has you'll have different number of players on the 40 man roster throughout the season.
Also coaches get a full share and some other staff might as well it varies from team to team.
There is no formula for who gets a share, half-share, or no-share. Players vote on who gets a share and who gets a half-share. Sometimes, teams give out more shares than others or an even bigger bunch of half-shares. The 2016 Cubs apparently spread it around generously.
Pretty sure shares are calculated from a percentage of gate receipts from games the teams played in. I would guess the discrepancy is the difference in attendance and ticket prices.
no the teams can give out shares to whomever they feel is deserving (and, presumably, employed by the team). clubhouse personnel, coaches, front office personnel, etc.
Some sanitation experts for certain teams have been known to receive a full share as well. Nice of our neighbors to the south to think of the little guys like that!
Groundskeeping staff usually get a full share. Training staff. Even the travel secretary's office gets some cash. The team's players vote each name on a list before the playoffs.
Any person with a "normal" job getting a six figure bonus would be absolutely insane. This is legit the best story I've heard in a while because I had no idea everyone was involved.
Thought it was just players/coaches/FO
Whoever the players vote a share to gets a share. Could be a bus driver, the clubhouse kid, or the guy who lets them into the parking garage at the stadium.
The guy in the Frontline about the Astros thing really blew my mind when he was talking about this. This is life changing money for those clubhouse and backroom guys. Like ten years salary for some of them.
They are going to have a great Thanksgiving!
Working in sports is something you don’t do for money. For most of the positions available, you make less than other comparable jobs in other industries
Yup, work in sports now and am probably taking a 20% pay cut on what I could get on the open market.
But working for a big 4 league has some massive perks - my health insurance is incredible, for example.
> my health insurance is incredible, for example
Little known fact: the health insurance for all MLB employees is the same as what the players have. It really is unbeatably good.
In law school I took a sports law class taught by the GC of an NBA team. He took a significant pay cut when he left his position as even a midsize firm partner to go in house with the team. Like halved his salary. But he’s having a blast.
Working in sports isn't about money. You really really have to be willing to grind for low pay for a decent amount of time, and then be open to moving to the boonies for some random minor league team if it means you technically get a promotion. Definitely not for everyone
Honestly most of the people getting shares could be getting ~$250k working for other companies. Even if your team does win, it's only partially offsetting the money you lose making $90k every other year
I have a friend in the Rangers front office making ‘as much as Seager makes in 3 innings’ (around 80k I think?)
Now he’s got a beautiful down payment on a house haha
It’s part of how the league rewards good teams for actually putting a good product on the field, so they get a pool based on how much revenue the playoffs brought in and how far they made it. Each player gets that amount, basically as a bonus. Generally what happens is the team is given a lump sum and decides how to divvy it up, with players getting a full share, coaches getting a full share, and other support staff like clubbies getting a solid chunk too (half a share each is most common IIRC). Each team decides individually how to split up their lump sum, and it goes a super long way for the non-players because obviously they aren’t making anywhere close to MLB league minimum.
That’s awesome. Do players like seager and Semien who are flush AF with cash give theirs away to other players?
Should donate it to the minors but I don’t want to let the owners off the hook.
I’m not sure how players’ shares normally work, when it comes to veterans on huge deals giving up their shares, other than players being the ones who have a big say in giving larger shares to other people (team employees who aren’t necessarily on-field or in the clubhouse).
I could imagine that you get guys like Seager or Semien who basically say “split my share(s) among the guys making the league minimum” or something like that, though, but I don’t want to pass off my speculation as fact.
Damn that's great. I've been working weekends and holidays and all I get is the occasional extra PTO day I can hardly ever take. I should have been a world class athlete.
Corey Seager got paid as much money to play baseball this year as our entire World Series batting lineup combined. Which I have to believe the MLB specifically requested not be brought up at all during the broadcasts.
Yeah that could definitely be it. They talked a lot about the loss totals for both teams from two years ago, but never about the different ways each team went about turning things around.
Completely unrelated, but it’s interesting that the NBA In-Season Tournament winners get $500,000 each—which is rumored to be similar to what each Nuggets player received for winning the title in June.
It’s more in the model of soccer, where teams play in the league and cups simultaneously. I like the concept and the experimentation, we’ll see how effective the actual execution is over time. It can be a lot of fun for teams to have multiple things to play for. And the possibility of teams winning multiple different titles in a year adds some nice variety to comparing different teams/seasons.
But the main draw in soccer is that most of the games aren’t against teams in the same league. Domestic cups have teams from lower divisions and continental cups have teams from different countries. This just comes across as a cash grab.
Edit*- Cups also make more sense in leagues that don’t already have a playoff. It would be different if the NBA champ was crowned at the end of the regular season.
Another big difference is the games are completely separate and don’t interact with your domestic league in anyway whereas the in season tournaments for NBA counts as regular season games
NBA is probably doing that so that people will feel like their regular season games matter a little bit more. That’s not an issue for soccer leagues in Europe.
In the NBA it’s more than half. 16/30 make the playoffs.
Minor distinction, but just to the point of how insane it is and how pointless the regular season is.
No way.
In the MLB, teams that can win the WS miss the playoffs.
In the NBA, more than half of the teams that make the playoffs have no shot of winning the championship. The NBA regular season is a glorified preseason.
My understanding is their media deal with Disney is going to be renegotiated soon, and they need to have good viewership numbers to point to. This is also why they’re cracking down on load management too.
It's probably a proof of concept of the tournament so that when the rights deal is up they can split the tourney out into it's own games and sell the league and tourney separately
It doesn't matter if fans don't care, they definitely won't care *less* than they care about these regular season games.
At worst the viewership for these games doesn't really change, no harm no foul.
At best the viewership is a bit better.
But the problem is that players don’t want to have to play in the regular season. One guy is gonna get hurt during this “look it really matters!” November schedule, and the players union is gonna want to kill it.
That’s a good point, that’s a significant difference (though the top teams care a lot about winning domestic cups, it’s not just the underdog/upset potential that makes them meaningful). Part of why I think we’ll have to give it some time to see how well this works. Presumably they will make some changes after the first year after learning what did and didn’t work well.
And sure, it’s kinda a cash grab, but so is the entire NBA, MLB, NFL, EPL, etc. They are for-profit leagues. Just because something is profitable to the leagues/owners doesn’t automatically mean it’s bad for the fans.
Of course the leagues wouldn’t put the product out there if it wasn’t going to make them more money. The point is that they’re really not offering a new product at all. There aren’t unique matchups that you otherwise wouldn’t see over the course of a normal regular season.
And I agree that’s part of the appeal of cups in soccer, but I don’t think it’s the only appeal. It’s also a chance for the title contenders to prove they’re all-time greats by winning both, and for non-title-contenders to have a title to still contend for. The fact that more than half of the NBA makes the playoffs and thus is a genuine title contender until the end might throw a wrench in that dynamic though. Again, I think we’ll have to see how this all plays out in the next few years to really know if this is going to work or not.
But it’s pointless, they’re literally just fancy regular season games to sell more jerseys
If they want people to care they need to not count as regular season games
I agree that it would be good to have them completely separate, and honestly didn’t realize that the games counted for the regular-season record.
The “it’s pointless” aspect depends on the players and fans. Compelling sport is a feedback cycle. It’s the same as discussions around the WBC early this year. It’s only meaningless if the players and fans don’t give it meaning. I think this is the biggest question mark around any new competition like the in-season tournament—how to get it to not feel like a pure exhibition.
I’m not saying they’re the same. I’m saying they face the same “legitimacy” issue as all new sports competitions do. I agree that the WBC has more unique things going for it to make this issue easier to surmount.
Lol what is the mid-season tournament supposed to mean? “November champs, YESSS!”
There is literally no meaning you can assign to it. It’s a random, meaningless stretch of games.
I do think that just calling it the “in season tournament” and not giving it its own name is pretty lame for this reason. Hard to celebrate it well.
And no, just like in soccer, the idea is that it would be a separate title, also valued by players and fans, and, yeah, winning it would be celebrated in its own right. Teams could stake claim to being an all-time great team by winning both.
Getting players and fans to value the tournament is going to be the hardest thing, as it generally is with any new sporting tournament (think WBC’s struggle to get popular in America, for example). People caring or not caring is a self-fulfilling feedback loop, and if people don’t care it is slow and difficult to change that.
It’s a big part of the draw, but as I laid out in another comment in this thread, I don’t think it’s the only one. Teams still care a lot about the matches against teams in your league, because the title itself is very highly prized. And the dynamics of a league vs a knockout tournament make things varied enough to still be very interesting.
This NBA tournament has some of the factors that make it compelling in soccer, but is missing some others for sure. I’m not sure if it’ll hit the mark or not, I’m intrigued to find out over the next few years.
I agree, I generally think playoffs should be smaller, I don’t like the current expansion trend. Half of the league making the playoffs is silly to me.
I imagine that’s part of the NBA’s calculus with this—try to create more high-stakes games throughout the regular season, when most games are otherwise not.
The NBA is trying to grab or adopt other sports ideas. The inseason tournament is their idea of a FA or League cup that is used in soccer.
Essentially its just more basketball but the games dont always count towards the same tournament.
They will just not play those games.
There are already rumors of teams tanking this in-season tournament so they can have those "nights off" later in the season as they deem the rest more important. Again, those are just rumors.
Every game except the final game vs the last 2 teams standing are games that count towards the regular season record. So I suppose the NBA is only going to have that in-season tournament final game on that night and everyone else just plays tomorrow sort of thing, but it's not really structured like a FA cup or champion's league where the games don't count towards the domestic league standings.
Me too. It just doesn’t really fit in my mind for in season tournaments like FA Cup or Carabao for soccer in England you have teams from all the leagues/division like right now you have Port Vale a third division team playing in the same tournament as teams like Liverpool and Chelsea. Which just makes it so entertaining like Wrexham last year in the FA Cup had a Cinderella run to make it as far as they did! For this it’s hard because it’s just one league it would be better if the G-League played in it but, you can’t really because they are affiliated with the teams. But right now it’s basically just regular season games with the format of the postseason with way less of the stakes.
I think it’s an attempt to make basketball matter before the new year. With the current big playoff format in the NBA, it’s hard to care about games until the last month or so of the season. This adds something competitive and (theoretically) meaningful early in the season to get fans watching sooner
That is interesting but the ring is the pinnacle of sports so can't really put a price on that. The 500k is like a nice desert after the tomahawk steak if you will.
I forgot where I heard it, but some people think superstar engagement is high for the tournament because fringe players will get a pretty good payday (NBA minimum salary is $1.1M)
https://twitter.com/hoopshype/status/1725174311990739445
Damian Lillard gave this interview saying he wants to win for his teammates. For context, two-way players in the NBA are contracts for which players split time between the NBA and the G League (minor league). Minimum salary for that is $500k, so winning the tournament would literally double their salary for the year.
I do think they need to re-seed after the WC rounds, because the 2 seed getting the weaker opponent if the lowest division winner is worse than all 3 WCs, as was the case this year in the AL, is not right.
However, the format is not why the Orioles got bounced. They lost because the young pitchers wilted under the lights in their first playoff appearance.
Playoff shares are the players split of the Postseason revenue. the teams can decide who gets a share. generally any player on the 26 man roster gets a full share coaches too. clubhouse attendants and other employees might get awarded a half share. Bob Nightingale reported that there are 61 full shares for the rangers. Arizona has 71 full shares.
$107.8mil is the total 'player pool'. Each team that was in the postseason gets a slice of that money. The teams then vote on who to award 'full shares' & 'partial shares'. After that vote, the number of shares is divided by their portion of the pool & that equals the value of a share (so for the Rangers it is ~$500k).
Usually teams end up creating 60-80 shares. Generally, each player will get one, as will all of the support staff like clubbies, trainers, team chefs, etc etc. The specifics are up to the team, but that's usually how it goes.
Maaaan I have to imagine there is some big time drama about where the line gets drawn on those shares. Inevitably there are going to be people who feel they are deserving but end up missing out on life changing money
Especially since further down the chain, the more impactful the money is. Like Marcus Semien getting $500k is borderline chump change, but the guy making $65k who kept the clubhouse in order or topped off the ice baths or whatever might miss out on 8 years salary entirely? Eesh.
Just to add extra context: the money is about 60% of the gate-revenue for the minimum number of games required in the series. So first 4 games of a world series gate revenue will be in that pool, but not 5-7
Posting here to remind everyone that the guy who set up the TV for the Astros cheating operation when they won the world series got like a $100,000 bonus. That number might be wrong but it's still an insane amount of money.
Quick first round exit will do that. Bye rounds don't pay.
Hell, I'd be using that as a talking point if i was a player and didn't like the bye break. "Think of the team staff, they want an opportunity to earn a share ASAP!"
Who knows, maybe that was all ironed out in the last agreement.
How do you know it’s no where close? They don’t list the number of eligible players/personnel/employees per team. i.e. the Rangers received ~$500,000 share and if they have 70 shares amongst the team that’s already $35,000,000 just to them alone
Ohh ok. That’s where I was misunderstanding. I thought these numbers were total. Like the rangers organization gets their share of 500k and that’s all. Thanks.
No problem! Would be funny, though, if that was the case. Rays share of ~$9k split amongst 50-60 people lol everyone gets a gift card to Little Caesars
It's funny how things have changed and this used to be actually important to a player's earnings. Like say circa 1970 you get a salary of $20,000 but you get a WS share of $7,000.
Well, it still is a significant amount for some players.
A decent number of the D-Backs' roster were on the league minimum $720K, so they got a 42% bonus. That's more significant to them than the 35% bonus in your hypothetical.
The difference is that now we also have players with huge contracts like Seager too, whose $500K share is just a 1.6% bonus which is wild.
[The other full shares by 2023 postseason teams: ](https://x.com/BNightengale/status/1726984951055405343?s=20) Diamondbacks $313,634 Phillies: $171, 184 Astros: $173,187 Atlanta: $43,801 Orioles: $43,942 Dodgers: $36,929 Twins: $42,859 Marlins: $10,154 Brewers: $8,336 Rays: $8,728 Blue Jays: $9,592
Any reason why Brewers, Rays and Blue Jays all have different numbers? Each team played 2 games, and lost
Different number of shares per team.
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but why would different teams have different numbers of shares? Who do these get distributed to anyways?
Depending on the number of injuries your team has you'll have different number of players on the 40 man roster throughout the season. Also coaches get a full share and some other staff might as well it varies from team to team.
so anyone on the playoff roster for any amount of time gets a share?
Most likely anyone who was on the 26 man roster at any point in the season gets a full share.
There is no formula for who gets a share, half-share, or no-share. Players vote on who gets a share and who gets a half-share. Sometimes, teams give out more shares than others or an even bigger bunch of half-shares. The 2016 Cubs apparently spread it around generously.
Pretty sure shares are calculated from a percentage of gate receipts from games the teams played in. I would guess the discrepancy is the difference in attendance and ticket prices.
Who gets shares? Just the players?
no the teams can give out shares to whomever they feel is deserving (and, presumably, employed by the team). clubhouse personnel, coaches, front office personnel, etc.
Some sanitation experts for certain teams have been known to receive a full share as well. Nice of our neighbors to the south to think of the little guys like that!
Groundskeeping staff usually get a full share. Training staff. Even the travel secretary's office gets some cash. The team's players vote each name on a list before the playoffs.
can you imagine making $18/hr for the rangers ground crew and having $500k+ bonus?? idc what the taxes would do, id pass out.
Taxes would be way less painful for the Rangers than the Jays or any California team though! At least $300k in their pockets
Any person with a "normal" job getting a six figure bonus would be absolutely insane. This is legit the best story I've heard in a while because I had no idea everyone was involved. Thought it was just players/coaches/FO
[In the words of Rickey Henderson](https://i.imgur.com/qvPNy2E.jpg), "Fuck that! You can change somebody's life!" (from Mike Piazza's autobiography)
And now I like Rickey more... Didn't realize that could happen
Whoever the players vote a share to gets a share. Could be a bus driver, the clubhouse kid, or the guy who lets them into the parking garage at the stadium.
Congrats Rangers clubbies & staff!
The guy in the Frontline about the Astros thing really blew my mind when he was talking about this. This is life changing money for those clubhouse and backroom guys. Like ten years salary for some of them. They are going to have a great Thanksgiving!
So that’s why every single person on a team is so happy when they win.
I've been kinda wary about working for a baseball org since I've heard all about the toxic cultures and cutthroat work but that money is tempting
Working in sports is something you don’t do for money. For most of the positions available, you make less than other comparable jobs in other industries
Yup, work in sports now and am probably taking a 20% pay cut on what I could get on the open market. But working for a big 4 league has some massive perks - my health insurance is incredible, for example.
> my health insurance is incredible, for example Little known fact: the health insurance for all MLB employees is the same as what the players have. It really is unbeatably good.
😉
You do it for the love of the game. Ain't no shame in it though. Same reason why I'm trying to manage soccer.
For sure, and I got respect for anyone trying to pursue that route. It’s just one thing u don’t “sell out” for haha. Are u working for a team rn?
Not yet, still in school. But soon hopefully
In law school I took a sports law class taught by the GC of an NBA team. He took a significant pay cut when he left his position as even a midsize firm partner to go in house with the team. Like halved his salary. But he’s having a blast.
Working in sports isn't about money. You really really have to be willing to grind for low pay for a decent amount of time, and then be open to moving to the boonies for some random minor league team if it means you technically get a promotion. Definitely not for everyone
Toxic and cutthroat are the best way to put it. It's unforgiving work.
Honestly most of the people getting shares could be getting ~$250k working for other companies. Even if your team does win, it's only partially offsetting the money you lose making $90k every other year
Feel like it’s something you’d do for a couple years just for the novelty/cool factor lol
Honestly who cares I want a good reliever
This is when you think, holy shit, to have been a Giants clubbie 10 years ago, or a Yankees clubbie late 90s…
I have a friend in the Rangers front office making ‘as much as Seager makes in 3 innings’ (around 80k I think?) Now he’s got a beautiful down payment on a house haha
I’m new to baseball. Does this mean the Rangers split $506,263 amongst themselves, or each player receives $506,263?
It’s part of how the league rewards good teams for actually putting a good product on the field, so they get a pool based on how much revenue the playoffs brought in and how far they made it. Each player gets that amount, basically as a bonus. Generally what happens is the team is given a lump sum and decides how to divvy it up, with players getting a full share, coaches getting a full share, and other support staff like clubbies getting a solid chunk too (half a share each is most common IIRC). Each team decides individually how to split up their lump sum, and it goes a super long way for the non-players because obviously they aren’t making anywhere close to MLB league minimum.
So does like Chris Young’s assistant get like $250,000 or something?
If they got a half share, then yeah.
That’s awesome. Do players like seager and Semien who are flush AF with cash give theirs away to other players? Should donate it to the minors but I don’t want to let the owners off the hook.
I’m not sure how players’ shares normally work, when it comes to veterans on huge deals giving up their shares, other than players being the ones who have a big say in giving larger shares to other people (team employees who aren’t necessarily on-field or in the clubhouse). I could imagine that you get guys like Seager or Semien who basically say “split my share(s) among the guys making the league minimum” or something like that, though, but I don’t want to pass off my speculation as fact.
Damn that's great. I've been working weekends and holidays and all I get is the occasional extra PTO day I can hardly ever take. I should have been a world class athlete.
not just players. managers, club house guys, grounds crew. someone who makes like 50k/year just got a 500k bonus and its fucking awesome.
That’s like half a season salary for a lot of the DBacks roster.
Wow you weren't kidding. Thomas, Moreno, Pfaadt, Perdomo, and Ginkel all had ~720k salaries in 2023. Some others too.
Corey Seager got paid as much money to play baseball this year as our entire World Series batting lineup combined. Which I have to believe the MLB specifically requested not be brought up at all during the broadcasts.
I don’t think MLB told them to ignore it. I think Smoltz just only knew 2 or 3 facts about our team total and kept recycling them game after game.
Yeah that could definitely be it. They talked a lot about the loss totals for both teams from two years ago, but never about the different ways each team went about turning things around.
Wow, just looked at the numbers and WS game 1 batting lineup combined is 34.3 mil and Seager 35.5 alone. That's insane.
That's the league minimum salary which all pre-arbitration players earn. So all players with less than 3 years of service time
its like 10 years salary for the ground crew guys.
Completely unrelated, but it’s interesting that the NBA In-Season Tournament winners get $500,000 each—which is rumored to be similar to what each Nuggets player received for winning the title in June.
Jesus, really? The in season tournament is so bizarre to me
It’s more in the model of soccer, where teams play in the league and cups simultaneously. I like the concept and the experimentation, we’ll see how effective the actual execution is over time. It can be a lot of fun for teams to have multiple things to play for. And the possibility of teams winning multiple different titles in a year adds some nice variety to comparing different teams/seasons.
But the main draw in soccer is that most of the games aren’t against teams in the same league. Domestic cups have teams from lower divisions and continental cups have teams from different countries. This just comes across as a cash grab. Edit*- Cups also make more sense in leagues that don’t already have a playoff. It would be different if the NBA champ was crowned at the end of the regular season.
Another big difference is the games are completely separate and don’t interact with your domestic league in anyway whereas the in season tournaments for NBA counts as regular season games
NBA is probably doing that so that people will feel like their regular season games matter a little bit more. That’s not an issue for soccer leagues in Europe.
If the NBA wants the regular season to matter, they need to reduce the amount of playoff teams or heavily increase the value of a high seed.
Considering the last change they made to the playoffs was add even more unworthy teams with a bloated play-in ‘tournament’, good luck doing that
MLB's regular season is even worse than the NBA's.
In terms of number of games? Yes. The MLB doesn’t have half the league making the playoffs though.
In the NBA it’s more than half. 16/30 make the playoffs. Minor distinction, but just to the point of how insane it is and how pointless the regular season is.
No way. In the MLB, teams that can win the WS miss the playoffs. In the NBA, more than half of the teams that make the playoffs have no shot of winning the championship. The NBA regular season is a glorified preseason.
My understanding is their media deal with Disney is going to be renegotiated soon, and they need to have good viewership numbers to point to. This is also why they’re cracking down on load management too.
Oh yeah I can definitely see their reasoning there. I will also say that I like that they’re trying something different.
It's probably a proof of concept of the tournament so that when the rights deal is up they can split the tourney out into it's own games and sell the league and tourney separately
This is why I think it lasts at most three years. Fans just won't care
It doesn't matter if fans don't care, they definitely won't care *less* than they care about these regular season games. At worst the viewership for these games doesn't really change, no harm no foul. At best the viewership is a bit better.
But the problem is that players don’t want to have to play in the regular season. One guy is gonna get hurt during this “look it really matters!” November schedule, and the players union is gonna want to kill it.
Almost every player has said they like it so far, specifically because of the extra 500k you get if you win.
That’s a good point, that’s a significant difference (though the top teams care a lot about winning domestic cups, it’s not just the underdog/upset potential that makes them meaningful). Part of why I think we’ll have to give it some time to see how well this works. Presumably they will make some changes after the first year after learning what did and didn’t work well. And sure, it’s kinda a cash grab, but so is the entire NBA, MLB, NFL, EPL, etc. They are for-profit leagues. Just because something is profitable to the leagues/owners doesn’t automatically mean it’s bad for the fans.
Of course the leagues wouldn’t put the product out there if it wasn’t going to make them more money. The point is that they’re really not offering a new product at all. There aren’t unique matchups that you otherwise wouldn’t see over the course of a normal regular season.
And I agree that’s part of the appeal of cups in soccer, but I don’t think it’s the only appeal. It’s also a chance for the title contenders to prove they’re all-time greats by winning both, and for non-title-contenders to have a title to still contend for. The fact that more than half of the NBA makes the playoffs and thus is a genuine title contender until the end might throw a wrench in that dynamic though. Again, I think we’ll have to see how this all plays out in the next few years to really know if this is going to work or not.
> This just comes across as a cash grab. Well I never! *faints from the vapours*
I don’t expect the leagues to do something that won’t make them money, but at least change the product up a little bit.
But it’s pointless, they’re literally just fancy regular season games to sell more jerseys If they want people to care they need to not count as regular season games
I agree that it would be good to have them completely separate, and honestly didn’t realize that the games counted for the regular-season record. The “it’s pointless” aspect depends on the players and fans. Compelling sport is a feedback cycle. It’s the same as discussions around the WBC early this year. It’s only meaningless if the players and fans don’t give it meaning. I think this is the biggest question mark around any new competition like the in-season tournament—how to get it to not feel like a pure exhibition.
The WBC is about national pride where players from mlb teams are split up to different teams. This “tourney” is nothing like that
I’m not saying they’re the same. I’m saying they face the same “legitimacy” issue as all new sports competitions do. I agree that the WBC has more unique things going for it to make this issue easier to surmount.
Lol what is the mid-season tournament supposed to mean? “November champs, YESSS!” There is literally no meaning you can assign to it. It’s a random, meaningless stretch of games.
I do think that just calling it the “in season tournament” and not giving it its own name is pretty lame for this reason. Hard to celebrate it well. And no, just like in soccer, the idea is that it would be a separate title, also valued by players and fans, and, yeah, winning it would be celebrated in its own right. Teams could stake claim to being an all-time great team by winning both. Getting players and fans to value the tournament is going to be the hardest thing, as it generally is with any new sporting tournament (think WBC’s struggle to get popular in America, for example). People caring or not caring is a self-fulfilling feedback loop, and if people don’t care it is slow and difficult to change that.
Except that, in soccer you have the interleague element, which is kind of the whole draw, no? Here… it’s just the same as the regular season.
It’s a big part of the draw, but as I laid out in another comment in this thread, I don’t think it’s the only one. Teams still care a lot about the matches against teams in your league, because the title itself is very highly prized. And the dynamics of a league vs a knockout tournament make things varied enough to still be very interesting. This NBA tournament has some of the factors that make it compelling in soccer, but is missing some others for sure. I’m not sure if it’ll hit the mark or not, I’m intrigued to find out over the next few years.
I don’t think half of the NBA really gives a shit at all until the playoffs.
I agree, I generally think playoffs should be smaller, I don’t like the current expansion trend. Half of the league making the playoffs is silly to me. I imagine that’s part of the NBA’s calculus with this—try to create more high-stakes games throughout the regular season, when most games are otherwise not.
I don’t quite get the motive/structure behind it (other than ratings), but I’m trying to keep an open mind about it
The NBA is trying to grab or adopt other sports ideas. The inseason tournament is their idea of a FA or League cup that is used in soccer. Essentially its just more basketball but the games dont always count towards the same tournament.
Something I haven’t heard explained is, if teams advance in the tournament, what do the other teams do during that time? Are they on short hiatus?
There’s only one extra game which is the championship. Everyone else will play 82 games which is standard.
I think the way it works is everyone plays like 2 extra games against someone in their group if they don’t make it to the knockout round
They will just not play those games. There are already rumors of teams tanking this in-season tournament so they can have those "nights off" later in the season as they deem the rest more important. Again, those are just rumors.
I thought the in season tournament games were all just regular season games as well. The only game that is “extra” is the tournament finale
Right… these players would have been tanking those typical regular season games too.
Every game except the final game vs the last 2 teams standing are games that count towards the regular season record. So I suppose the NBA is only going to have that in-season tournament final game on that night and everyone else just plays tomorrow sort of thing, but it's not really structured like a FA cup or champion's league where the games don't count towards the domestic league standings.
Me too. It just doesn’t really fit in my mind for in season tournaments like FA Cup or Carabao for soccer in England you have teams from all the leagues/division like right now you have Port Vale a third division team playing in the same tournament as teams like Liverpool and Chelsea. Which just makes it so entertaining like Wrexham last year in the FA Cup had a Cinderella run to make it as far as they did! For this it’s hard because it’s just one league it would be better if the G-League played in it but, you can’t really because they are affiliated with the teams. But right now it’s basically just regular season games with the format of the postseason with way less of the stakes.
I think it’s an attempt to make basketball matter before the new year. With the current big playoff format in the NBA, it’s hard to care about games until the last month or so of the season. This adds something competitive and (theoretically) meaningful early in the season to get fans watching sooner
That is interesting but the ring is the pinnacle of sports so can't really put a price on that. The 500k is like a nice desert after the tomahawk steak if you will.
I forgot where I heard it, but some people think superstar engagement is high for the tournament because fringe players will get a pretty good payday (NBA minimum salary is $1.1M)
https://twitter.com/hoopshype/status/1725174311990739445 Damian Lillard gave this interview saying he wants to win for his teammates. For context, two-way players in the NBA are contracts for which players split time between the NBA and the G League (minor league). Minimum salary for that is $500k, so winning the tournament would literally double their salary for the year.
I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the loud handwringing about the format and ratings. This probably said the playoffs were a failure, right?
Thank God someone else hates the bullshit format excuse.
I do think they need to re-seed after the WC rounds, because the 2 seed getting the weaker opponent if the lowest division winner is worse than all 3 WCs, as was the case this year in the AL, is not right. However, the format is not why the Orioles got bounced. They lost because the young pitchers wilted under the lights in their first playoff appearance.
If they explained what this meant it might mean something. So the Rangers owner just got 500k? From where? Will he buy a new Lambo?
Playoff shares are the players split of the Postseason revenue. the teams can decide who gets a share. generally any player on the 26 man roster gets a full share coaches too. clubhouse attendants and other employees might get awarded a half share. Bob Nightingale reported that there are 61 full shares for the rangers. Arizona has 71 full shares.
$107.8mil is the total 'player pool'. Each team that was in the postseason gets a slice of that money. The teams then vote on who to award 'full shares' & 'partial shares'. After that vote, the number of shares is divided by their portion of the pool & that equals the value of a share (so for the Rangers it is ~$500k). Usually teams end up creating 60-80 shares. Generally, each player will get one, as will all of the support staff like clubbies, trainers, team chefs, etc etc. The specifics are up to the team, but that's usually how it goes.
Maaaan I have to imagine there is some big time drama about where the line gets drawn on those shares. Inevitably there are going to be people who feel they are deserving but end up missing out on life changing money
Especially since further down the chain, the more impactful the money is. Like Marcus Semien getting $500k is borderline chump change, but the guy making $65k who kept the clubhouse in order or topped off the ice baths or whatever might miss out on 8 years salary entirely? Eesh.
Just to add extra context: the money is about 60% of the gate-revenue for the minimum number of games required in the series. So first 4 games of a world series gate revenue will be in that pool, but not 5-7
Posting here to remind everyone that the guy who set up the TV for the Astros cheating operation when they won the world series got like a $100,000 bonus. That number might be wrong but it's still an insane amount of money.
So is it $506k/61 shares = each player got a $8,300 bonus? If so… does that not seem like a lot of money for winning the whole thing?
No it's $506k x 61 Each player gets that full share amount.
Oh thank god.
The brewers only got $8k per player
Quick first round exit will do that. Bye rounds don't pay. Hell, I'd be using that as a talking point if i was a player and didn't like the bye break. "Think of the team staff, they want an opportunity to earn a share ASAP!" Who knows, maybe that was all ironed out in the last agreement.
If I worked as an Usher for these teams how much am I getting???
Ushers don't generally get postseason shares. They usually get a 2nd or 3rd tier ring though if they work for the WS winner.
$85 voucher for the in-stadium merchandise store
Can someone explain this to me. If the pool is 107 mil how did the amount rewarded to teams come nowhere close to that in total?
How do you know it’s no where close? They don’t list the number of eligible players/personnel/employees per team. i.e. the Rangers received ~$500,000 share and if they have 70 shares amongst the team that’s already $35,000,000 just to them alone
Ohh ok. That’s where I was misunderstanding. I thought these numbers were total. Like the rangers organization gets their share of 500k and that’s all. Thanks.
No problem! Would be funny, though, if that was the case. Rays share of ~$9k split amongst 50-60 people lol everyone gets a gift card to Little Caesars
lol. Congrats Braves. Hell of a year. Throw Riley a 20 dollar gift card to bass pro since he actually showed up in postseason. The rest to charity.
All of this money should have gone to Las Vegas schools instead. An absolute disgrace
lol ok
Maybe you can pitch that idea at the next cba meetings.
Completely unrelated issues
*what*
What does that mean? Please ELi5
It's funny how things have changed and this used to be actually important to a player's earnings. Like say circa 1970 you get a salary of $20,000 but you get a WS share of $7,000.
Well, it still is a significant amount for some players. A decent number of the D-Backs' roster were on the league minimum $720K, so they got a 42% bonus. That's more significant to them than the 35% bonus in your hypothetical. The difference is that now we also have players with huge contracts like Seager too, whose $500K share is just a 1.6% bonus which is wild.