Rob Manfred: The State and Future of Major League Baseball

Yeah, you know, we were the first ones that started to allow private equity investments. We did it because of valuations. You know, I mean, as the valuations go up, it just gets harder and harder to build cap tables. Our experience with the private equity firms that have been involved in our business has been unilitally positive. You know, they're passive investors. They've been good partners in the clubs that they've been in and I continue to believe that, you know, with the right limitations and the right rules surrounding, you know, information and whatnot, that it's a positive for the sport and for franchise values as a whole. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of SBJ's Onstage, on your host, Taylor Bloom. This week's episode features Rob Manfred, Commissioner of Major League Baseball, in a wide-ranging interview with SBJ senior writer Joe Lemire. This was recorded on April 22nd, 2025, at the CAA World Congress of Sports, presented by Sports Business Journal. Since then, Manfred has been in the headlines for his ongoing labor discussions with players and signs of progress toward a new national media rights deal. But this conversation remains just as valuable today. It's a candid, wide-ranging look at his priorities for the league, from labor relations and media strategy to global growth and on-field innovation. If you want the big picture context behind the news, this is it. Let's go on stage. We have a saying in my business that all news is local. So here we are in national Tennessee. I'm sure a lot of folks are wondering about the expansion process and where are you in that. Oh, good. Let's get right to it. So look, I have been consistent about the idea that baseball should be looking to expand. There are several markets in the United States that are big enough to support a major league baseball team that want baseball. I think we should try to meet that demand. I also think it's an opportunity for the sport in terms of schedule format. 32 is a good number. Four team divisions better than five. It works a lot better for us. And that's an important consideration in baseball because we play so many games. So I'm committed to the idea. I'd like to be in a position where we've picked teams before I'm done and try to fill those two additional slots. Sure. All right. Let's get on the east on the highway a little bit. We've got Bristol Tennessee coming up and we've got a big game there perhaps the expected largest crowd ever. What went into the planning that game and what should everyone expect? You know, Bristol's part of a growth effort that we've undertaken over the last few years. The concept is take the game someplace where it's not usually played not played every day. It works best if you have some sort of an affinity theme. So, you know, feel the dreams in Iowa, Rick Wood, in Alabama, Fort Bragan, North Carolina, Williamsport, Pennsylvania. And we thought Tennessee, great baseball culture, Tennessee volunteers, rating NCAA champions, Vanderbilt's always had an amazing baseball program. And, you know, there is an overlap, I think, between NASCAR fans and our fan base. And so it seemed like a natural and the idea of having a huge crowd. I think we've sold 50,000 seats already. Really appealing to us. So we're looking forward to Bristol. We think it's going to be a great event. Yeah. I remember we spoke last year about the Rick Wood game, which was a great success. And so many of these, as you say, when there's an affinity and narrative that sort of really helps, how do you balance maybe using that to your advantage doing more often? Or obviously then you have, you know, home gates that you're taking away. There's a bouncing act. But how many of these could you have? Look, right now, we kind of focused on two a year. The only one that we have repeated so far. We've done it several times as Williamsport. We think that the play with the little leagers is invaluable to us. It's important to our youth development efforts. So we keep doing that every year. And then one other one that's something fresh or different. I'm not saying we're never going back one of the places we've been, but we like to have a new idea. And there's so a couple of years seems about right for us. This spring training was the first time that ABS was used at the major league for spring training games. How did you feel like that experiment went? What was the feedback you got from players and empires? You know, we feel like the experiment was a great success. I mean, I think most important. And it is sort of where we start on all these issues. It was really popular with fans. I think fans like the idea of trying to get a particularly high leverage important calls right. And you know, there's an entertainment aspect to the technology itself, the renderings, and how quick it is. People seem excited about it. So we see it as a success. The empires have agreed to move forward with it, which is the most important thing. And in general, my feedback from players have been really good. Now, we did take instruction out of the player meetings, you know, every year, I meet with each of the individual teams. And last year when we were out there, we asked them explicitly do you like the challenge system or do you like the system where every pitch gets called? It gets called. Interestingly, they overwhelmingly favored the challenge system. So we did build the lily on the test a little bit. You know, we knew sort of what they thought about the two choices going in. Sure. And certainly makes sense to, you know, work your way toward potentially an everyday system. Yeah. You know, look, I think it's important to think about the concept behind replay generally. We accepted when we first went to the instant replay system that you're not going to get every call right. That's an aspiration that no matter how much you do, whatever, the real goal for us has always been in the high leverage situations when it really matters to have an outlet where you can get a bad call corrected. And we see the challenge system in that same thing. It's not every pitch, but if in fact in a really important situation, one gets missed, you got a chance to get it right. Yeah. I have long thought that fans' primary concern about umpiring, officiating is this, they don't want their team to lose on a bad call. So getting that in place. And that's the leverage play, right? Sure. And I know that in Korea, the KBO introduced it full league-wide last year, and they've made a few tweaks. Is that something that you've tracked it all? Because I know, yeah, we have a nice back and forth with KBO and MPB on these rule issues. Not every one of the three does everything in exactly the same order of the Japanese, less interested, for example, in the pitch clock, because their fans seem to like longer games, which good for them. You know, that's a good thing. But yeah, we pay a lot of attention to those sorts of experiments, how they've worked, they were very satisfied with the way it played out in Korean. We take that as encouraging as well. Sure. And that's certainly been a, you know, just coordinating with the other league officials, but that was a market. You went to Korea last year, and then certainly everyone saw, based on the ratings, I think everyone saw how well everything went in Japan. What was your take away from that experience? Yeah, Japan was phenomenal. You know, we have invested over a long period of time, things like the WBC, Openers in Japan, you know, an effort to get more Japanese players to come here and play. And I think those efforts bore a lot of fruit during this trip. You literally, you couldn't go anywhere in Tokyo without seeing Otani's face. I mean, it was unbelievable. You go three blocks. It's another picture of Shohei, which is great. Games sold like crazy, huge television audiences, 24 million people for each of the two games. And just a great event, real buzz in the city, couldn't be happier with the way it turned out. Sure. And then, you know, while we're thinking internationally and globally, certainly everyone in the sports business and all businesses are keeping in eye on economic indicators, potential tariffs. How is Major League Baseball approaching this? Look, we think of ourselves as an entertainment product. Entertainment products fall in that large category of discretionary spends. And so we pay a lot of attention to the economy. It does, you know, the idea of a recession, not good for our business, obviously. But so far, our attendance has really held up. We had the biggest Friday night last week since 2007. We're up a couple of ticks off last year, which was a great year for us attendance-wise. So we're holding our own so far and also holding our breath, I guess. So aren't we all? The question just came in and encouraged all of you to, you know, try to get to them as they come. Softball is a top five sport for girls in high school. And the College World Series games have more than two million viewers. And I'll even now we just heard Commissioner Silver talking about the, obviously they have the WNBA product. What does MLB think about softball? Yeah. We're going to have news about an investment in that space at the professional level and then not too distant future. But softball has been a huge part of our youth development programs. Every place that we're doing baseball, we try to do softball alongside it. You know, the biggest determinant of fandom is the kid plays as a young person. And it's really important in women's sports because they are often the deciders and households as to how money gets spent. So really focused on softball. And interestingly, have found some significant traction in women's baseball. You know, the idea of exactly the same sport, I do think there's something to that. So we're really interested in all of those aspects of women's sport. Sure. There were certainly news earlier the spring about ESPN, you know, opting out of its media package. You know, what progress have you made to find a shooter? Is there a possibility that ESPN comes back? Do you split it up? Look, that package involves three great assets, really. I mean, the wild card round, the playoffs, the home run derby, and you know, really are only truly exclusive window on Sunday night. Because those assets are great, we have had tremendous incoming interest with respect to the package. A number of bidders that'll be interesting. Excuse me, the whole thing. But, you know, whether it gets what or not that remains to be seen. I think the most important thing from our perspective is that the interest level has been such that the next deal is going to be a step forward for baseball in terms of reach, in terms of developing new partners that are going to be important for us in 28. And, you know, we're looking forward to sorting the next three years out in fairly short order. Yes. No leagues are completely apples to apples comparisons, but certainly we saw everyone saw what the NBA was able to do. Are there anything anything that you can take away from that deal or how are you starting to map out? I'm sure those conversations are well underway. Yeah, look, I think the NBA and Commissioner Silver in particular did an unbelievable job in a really difficult environment. I think the biggest single thing and we did pay a lot of attention to what they're doing is, you know, the idea of having essentially all your rights available and then cutting up packages that are as appealing as possible to the various broadcast partners important for us to try to emulate. I think local in particular is a huge opportunity for us when you accumulate our local audiences and we take those accumulated numbers to market in 2028, there's going to be real interest in that product. You know, most of our local markets were the highest rated programming all summer long and if you can get yourself into a format where you can accumulate those viewing audiences, you really have something that will be of great value. There was a report recently that maybe MLB TV could be even be licensed to others. You know, we have all these, you know, whether it's the Amazon Prime, the Netflix, we have Apple with a lot of big streamers that are involved. Is this something that you would consider building your own? Would you work with a partner? Well, I think that MLB.tv being available out there, you know, it's part of our effort to make sure that we're in the best position vis-à-vis the media buyers as possible. It's a great asset in the sense that you got a large number of subscribers that are very sticky. They renew you the year. It can be an appealing part of a package going forward. Longer term, you know, I don't like the idea of finding a partner on the digital side that becomes the home for baseball. I think one of the things that we have struggled with and, you know, some of it of our own doing is we ask our fans to find games a lot of different places. I think if we could get into a situation where we have a broader, bigger, national footprint and, you know, that's easy access in terms of broadcast or the like. And then a digital product, which is where the rest of baseball can be found. I think it would be a little more fan-friendly than where we are today. And as far as getting everyone, your job, of course, is the ultimate coalition builder. I imagine trying to get every club involved on this is a bit of a challenge. Well, it, look, always a challenge when you talk about change. I mean, change is hard to pull off, no matter what kind of change it is. But we've had a pretty good track record in that regard. And I think the current situation, particularly in local media, creates an opportunity. Usually when you, you know, we're challenged in the local markets right now because of the decline of the RSNs. When you have a challenge, there's usually an opportunity and we think we have a way to take advantage of that opportunity. The number of questions have come in on a similar topic, probably one that you were expecting anyway, about competitive balance and payroll spending from large markets to small markets. We do have this, you do have this collective bargaining agreement coming up. Is that something, is the CBA the best way to remedy that or how else can you approach? Really, really, probably the only way, but I think it's important to talk about the different aspects of competitive balance. You know, we go out in the fall and I'm sure we're going to do it right before the playoffs start because we kind of do it every year. And we talk about the fact that we have competitive balance in the sense that we haven't had a lot of repeat winners and there's been a lot of variety in terms of teams that make the playoffs and teams that ultimately win the World Series. And that's important. That's really important. But the other aspect of competitive balance, which is I think the one that is of concern to our fans. And again, you know, we try to stay focused on that fan idea is, you know, in the winter time, when you're in a market where it's a smaller market, resources are more limited, your team's doing nothing. And you see other teams kind of loading up on what everybody perceives to be great players. There becomes a perception that there is a lack of balance, a lack of competitive balance, a lack of fairness. And that perception, whether it's borne out in terms of the results on the field, ultimately, is really important to our business because we need to sell season tickets during that exact same window. And that perception can be very damaging. I think that, you know, over the last couple of years, we have heard more and more from fans. You know, the theme becomes you've done a lot to make the game better on the field. But, you know, in X, Y, or Z market, we feel like we don't have a fair chance. And that's a problem because at the end of the day, we sell competition. Yeah. And I think there's a big difference whether it's there's certainly been teams that have gone through rebuilding processes. But as long as there's, you know, clear strategy, there's excitement of around these young prospects and seeing them develop, whereas a couple examples out there where maybe that's there's less hope. Yeah. I think that I would say this. I do think that if you go through a rebuild and it kind of works out when we use the word promptly, you know, within a reasonable period of time, that can generate a lot of excitement. I think where things go awry and, you know, rebuilding is an exact science and the rebuild takes longer. That is very damaging to the business and, you know, trying to get into a situation where we minimize those kind of rebuilds. I think we'll be a positive force. How would you assess how the games in Tampa and Sacramento, you know, historically, minorly ballpark have gone to this point. Let me take Sacramento first. You know, I went out before the season to see the ballpark. They had a big lunch and I think 500 people showed up. You know, a lot of enthusiasm in Sacramento. They see themselves back to question number one as an expansion candidate, and rightfully so. They've done a really nice job investment by the river cats, the minorly team and the A's to make the ballpark experience as good as possible. They're up about 66 percent. In terms of ticket sales off where the A's were in Oakland. So that's been really positive. But obviously, you know, the long-term play there. Las Vegas is going to get built and they're going to be in Vegas. So that it's really a temporary play. Tampa more difficult just because of the timing and the uncertainty, you know, hats off to Hal Steinberger and the Yankees. You know, they had a renovation program at Steinberger Field that was, I think, was a little more than $30 million they were spending. And not only did they spend the money, do the renovations, but the first people that got to use those renovations were the race. I mean, it's kind of like buying a new car and giving it to your teenager first, you know. Are the race going to wreck it? Who knows, right? But you know, all kidding aside, I do think it was very generous of Hal in particular to do. I think it will be an interesting experience. I've been very committed to the idea of Tampa Bay. But there's two sides to Tampa Bay. The idea of playing some games on the Tampa side. See now that going is important. And I do think the renovations has made it as good as possible for the year. At least that they're going to use it. I don't see it going beyond this year, but at least for this year. And so far, you know, kind of, I don't know if that's wood or not, knock on wood. The weather's been pretty good. So we're, you know, we feel good about the start they've made in Tampa. And of course, the repairs to tropical field are, yeah, scheduled what any update on that. And then obviously more pressing, I'm sure a lot of folks want to know what would the race do long term? Yeah. We remain optimistic that the trap will be ready for 26. So the way the lease worked there is when you lose a year being 2025, it extends a year. So they're going to be there through 28. So we're anxious to get those repairs done and get them back in their real home in a in a major league ballpark. I remain in the view that there is an outcome that keeps baseball in Tampa Bay. I think Tampa Bay regions a major league market. And we're going to do everything humanly possible to try to find a long term solution there. Which leagues fan experience do you find aspirational and why? Oh, that's an interesting one. I mean, you know, it's sort of hard to not answer that question. The NFL, I mean, given they are such a jug or not. It's a great business. I do think that the appointment kind of viewing that the NFL attracts on Sunday afternoons is an unbelievable asset for that sport. On the one hand, on the other hand, you know, we're never going to have that. It's 162 is opposed to 18. I mean, it's just a different product, right? I think the NBA and Adam have done a phenomenal job in terms of engaging with other parts of our culture around the sport. It's something we work really hard at. And I think it's an important part of building fandom, particularly with younger generations. There are also a few questions here. Would you ever institute a minimum salary floor as well as a salary cap and how are those conversations? Yes. You know, I think this is one of the things that often is misunderstood. You know, people talk about the mechanism that is used by the other four, you know, including soccer major professional sports. I mean, it involves a commitment to the players that you're going to pay them a certain percentage of revenue. And the way that you ensure that you pay that percentage is you have a floor and a cap. Everybody's got to be in that range. Otherwise, you have no idea whether you're going to answer. So, you know, by definition, what people call a salary cap involves a cap in a floor. I think if there was, you know, our owners haven't decided where we're going to be after the 26 season when the collective bargaining agreement expires, despite the fact that one thing that I am absolutely comfortable saying is if you're ever going to make a salary cap proposal, it's going to have a cap and a floor. Sure. When it comes to ownership, I know the process in Minnesota has probably gone on longer than most people expected. Any idea as to why that might be, I know they're franchised with the league is producing their local media rights. I'm sure that's probably the least part of it not having that certainty. Look, I don't, I don't think Minnesota or any of the clubs that are using MLB media have any more uncertainty than a lot of our SN clubs. In a matter of fact, they may have more in the sense that they know we're not going anywhere as opposed to in our SN partners. I don't think that's a significant factor. I really think that that sale was going along nicely. There was a lead bidder who was very public about the fact that they were the lead bidder and that lead bidder turned to another baseball team to make a deal. That made the process go a little slower. There are a number of really quality groups interested in Minnesota and I'm confident they're going to get a sale at a good number in fairly short order. So it turns out torpedo bats weren't the answer to everything. How do you think about the idea of innovating even on the most basic tools? Yeah, I think that first of all, when you hold a torpedo bat, if I gave you what people call a torpedo bat and gave you another bat, about half the people would be able to tell you which is which. It is not as dramatic as it's kind of made out to be. Number one, number two, there's a huge tradeoff with a torpedo bat. There is a larger sweet spot and if you actually are talented enough that you think that that's where you hit it, you do get a little better performance. The problem is when you're off the sweet spot, you pay a price in terms of what you get. Number three, probably the best piece, I hate to be a homer, but the best piece on this, Kevin Malar did a piece right after the weekend where this all started, where he held up a bat that he used in 2004 where he had moved the sweet spot around. This is not new. I mean, this has been going on a long time. I think within the contours of our rules and we do have rules regulating bats that trying to find a way to be a little bit better is kind of what competition is about, always within the rules. With team valuations increasing and capital structures getting more complex, how do you think about the rule of private equity in MLB? Yeah, we were the first ones that started to allow private equity investments. As the valuations go up, it just gets harder and harder to build cap tables. They're passive investors. They've been good partners in the clubs that they've been in and I continue to believe that with the right limitations and the right rules surrounding information and whatnot, that it's a positive for the sport and for franchise values as a whole. Last week, one of the great annual traditions we had Jackie Robinson day, certainly in today's political climate, some of those initiatives are being discouraged. How do you look at DEI and social responsibility in 2025? Look, I think the headline for me is our values have not changed. We want our player compliment, our front offices and our fan base to be reflective of the makeup of our country and we're going to continue to pursue that goal in all three of those groups. I think it's always something that we pay attention to is evolution that goes on with respect to the legal landscape and we do manage in an effort to avoid any government intervention, rarely. The old phrase, "I'm from the government. I'm here to help." To the extent that you can stay off that radar, I think it's a really good thing. Earlier, we heard from the Vanderbilt athletic director and we've talked a bit about college in NIL. There's been a trend in baseball that's draft a lot more college players. Is it something that's on your radar to consider how the NCAA college baseball is helping? We think college baseball has become and will continue to become increasingly important to us. It puts us in a position where we draft players much closer to them coming to the big leagues. They get drafted with a level of familiarity in the fan bases that is really important for us because it generates excitement. We're getting the best pitcher from, I mean, we were talking about Vanderbilt. That's an exciting thing for fans and they actually show up in the Major League ballpark a lot quicker. We're interested in working with college baseball to continue that trend toward some more and more college players. Well, the pitch clock has been one of the great inventions in baseball. The speaker clock here, however, has come up red saving you, but everyone round of applause for Commissioner Manford. Thanks for listening to this episode of Onstage. If you found value in this conversation with Commissioner Manford, subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with colleagues who follow the business of baseball. Here's a thought starter to bring back to your team. In a sport that's both steeped in tradition and ripe for change, how do you decide which innovations to push forward and which traditions to protect. I'd love to hear your perspective. email me at [email protected]. We'll be back next week with another exclusive conversation from a leader shaping the future of sports business. Until next time, stay tuned and stay ahead. This is Onstage.