News Corp. is buying 49% of the YES (Yankees Entertainment Sports) network with the Yankees agreeing to be paid for 30 years for the rights to televise the Yankee games.
That provides a steady revenue to the Yankees. Will it cause the Yankees to lose their incentive to win? Is the revenue stream impacted by ratings? If not, then the Yankees will have less incentive.
The huge sums being generated by sports networks is making attendance less important. Games are becoming staged events, which eventually could be performed in studios with fans as extras.
All this combined with baseball being outsourced and played by fewer and fewer kids means that the structure of professional baseball may collapse by 2020. People just won't waste so much time watching much less attending games. The Major Baseball League (MBL) will be in turmoil and a billion dollar industry will wonder how it could have entrusted its leadership to an incompetent like Bud Selig. By then it will be way too late to recover. Baseball as the American national pastime will become a part of our past, not our future.
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