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Do the Owners of MLB Teams Even Like Baseball?

The failsons and finance brokers who own MLB franchises seem ready to destroy the league to make themselves a little richer—and too many fans may take their side.

The principal owner of the Athletics, John Fisher, speaks during a ceremonial groundbreaking for a $1.75 billion stadium on June 23, 2025, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Kyle Tucker was the last straw. If we are to believe the flurry of reports after the Los Angeles Dodgers signed the free-agent outfielder on January 15, 2026, Major League Baseball’s ownership class saw the Dodgers’ latest edition as an existential threat to the game—or at least their financial stakes in it.

The Dodgers were already spending more than half a billion dollars on salary between player compensation and luxury tax penalties, eclipsing the second-highest spending team by nearly $100 million. The MLB is the last major American sport without a salary cap, allowing players to make top market value unbound by restrictions set by the league. So the only thing stopping the Dodgers from adding another bat, along with star closer Edwin Diaz, was ownership group Guggenheim Partners’ willingness to spend.

Right now, baseball’s national and global popularity is once again ascending. On the backs of mega-stars like Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, the MLB has recovered from the steroid scandals of the early 2000s. It helped that the pitch clock shortened a game that many fans felt was bloated. Given a few more years of momentum, baseball could reach heights of popularity it hasn’t seen since Derek Jeter was winning World Series rings for the New York Yankees.

But the league is willing to put all that at risk to force labor to come to heel. As the billionaires begin asserting their power over players and fans, it’s worth asking whether these failsons and finance brokers actually like the game the fans hold dear. The answer seems clear, no matter what their PR-filtered statements say. Why else would owners be willing to destroy the game to fatten their wallets?

Sports ownership is one of the most stable investments for multimillionaires and billionaires in the United States. Franchise valuations, especially NBA and NFL teams, are skyrocketing. The NFL is a juggernaut willing to destroy everything in its path. The Seattle Seahawks, fresh off a Super Bowl winning season, are currently on the market, with bids estimated to eclipse the record $6.05 spent by Josh Harris and company spent acquiring the Washington Commanders. The Los Angeles Lakers sold for $10 billion in 2025 and are now under the same ownership as the Dodgers.

As the valuations of NBA and NFL teams continue to rise, baseball owners have looked on in contempt. The average franchise valuation has increased 59 percent for NFL teams and 87 percent for NBA teams in the past three years, while MLB teams have grown at what owners see as a paltry 25 percent. Only the Yankees and Dodgers crack the top 50 of Forbes’s most valuable franchises, while 30 of the 32 NFL teams made the list. The Minnesota Twins struggled to find investors last year after the children of former owner Carl Pohlad helped sink the club into $500 million in debt. Nine franchises lost their local television broadcast rights after FanDuel Sports Network and parent company Main Street Sports went bankrupt.

The billionaires are angry, and they’re willing to sacrifice the 2027 season to get what they want. And what they want is a hard salary cap. They’re prepared to spin the salary cap as a win for fans, a way for every team to vie for a World Series ring by leveling the playing feel. Throughout the 2026 season, this spin will come directly from the team owners like the Angels’ Arte Moreno, who recently said, “Winning doesn’t seem to be a top five........

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