MLB Opening Day Preview with Alex Rodriguez

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0:29Welcome back to The Deal. I'm Jason Kelly alongside Alex Rodriguez, a rare in-person, just the two of us, chilling in New York. You're here for some really interesting meetings for your various jobs that you have. But I wanted to take this opportunity, because you're here, to really lean into baseball, which we're going to do a lot this season on The Deal, because sometimes I even forget you're a pretty good baseball player. You did all right out there. And so I want to get into some of the things that we've seen recently, what we may see coming up in the baseball season. I did want to start, though, with a note.

1:03On a recent episode, we had David Levy, who is, of course, the CEO and co-founder of Horizon Sports and Experiences. And we gave him credit for essentially inventing March Madness, modern March Madness, which he did. and I think our title for that episode was He's the Reason You Can Watch March Madness and Alex, a lot of people watched it this time around. Opening day, check this out, an average of 9.8 million viewers, that's up 6 % from last year, which set its own record and that is, I think, owing to David Levy because it's not just on CBS, it's CBS, TNT, TBS, and True TV. You are tuned in.

1:43It's incredible. The way he did it with having multiple partners, multiple, both cable and CBS, it was a very complicated deal. Also to bring in the talent that he's pulling from all different directions. It was a masterpiece and it's still running and running stronger than ever. Yeah, and it was really cool to watch it. And obviously there have been some great games so far. I think the viewership will really continue on both the men's side and the women's side. And, you know, you're participating in Brackets for a cause. You're not doing great. Not doing great. You're not doing great. Too much of my heart and my brains.

2:18Miami's out. Although Michigan, I mean. They're hanging in there. They're hanging in there. Let's talk baseball. Last time we talked about baseball, it was literally hours before you were headed to the World Baseball Classic Championship game. It was in your backyard. We know the score. We know what happened. Venezuela beat the U.S. 3-2. What was it like that night? The Olympics for Latin America. Oh, that's interesting. That's what it felt like. Because it's funny, Poppy and I were trying to make the point on the pregame before the last game when Venezuela beat America. And we were saying, paraphrasing here, Poppy and I were saying to Jeter and Burkhardt, look, this is so much bigger for Venezuela than it is for the U.S.

2:58So much bigger for Dominican, so much bigger than for any Latin American team. And really, anyone who plays the America, the U.S., is going to be a bigger game for the opponent. This is the pastime. This is our game that we created. So for Venezuela, one of the most incredible moments was when Salvador, the catcher for Kansas City, the World Series champion, his answer was something like, I asked him, again, we're paraphrasing here, what does this mean to the great people of Venezuela? And he started breaking down crying. Oh, wow. And this was in the postgame. I mean, he's got tears. And he's saying, well, Alex, I don't know if you know, but if you've been reading the press, like, we've had a couple tough times over the last— It's been a rough time.

3:37A couple months, a couple weeks. and having this victory for our people means more than just a victory. But he said it much more eloquently with a lot of emotion. This means a lot to a lot of people. It's how they measure themselves against America. And the numbers were just off the charts. So let me give you the numbers. So the championship game alone, seen by almost 10.7 million viewers, that is almost double the 5.4 million who watched America lose the last time. That was to Japan back in 2023. That's an incredible bump for a game that many people are like, baseball, I'm not so sure about it.

4:14It shows you how successful the game is globally, to your point. So that sort of new high-water mark, I think, is a really, really interesting moment. I want to talk about what Rob Manfred was doing and saying around that. But before we get to that, I mean, from your perspective, from sort of a personal perspective. You're a Dominican American. I mean, what was the feel for you? Obviously, you know, we talked a little bit in the last episode when we talked about World Baseball Classic, kind of your heart being in a couple places when the DR played the U.S., but, like, you must have a unique perspective on this.

4:54Well, that's why you're a champion of journalists, right? Like, this is the$64 ,000 question for me. Look, I learned a long time ago that I'll never go against my mother again. She's 90 now. And if I ever cheer against the Dominican Republic, I may not have a home to come back to. So I'm still fearful of my mom. So definitely Dominican Republic was my choice against the field. Once they got eliminated, it was easy for me, obviously, to cheer for the U.S. But one more thing, Jason, because I was on site for three days, and it felt like a Caribbean World Series slash Olympics, you call it. But what was interesting is, you know, Alabama, LSU, It had a little pregame game day kind of feel.

5:36Starting at 1 o 'clock, you have different bands playing outside. It was like a concert. Water Palooza. You name it. It was a big party, very festive. So much pride. And what I think baseball has taught us, it's still a great game. When you have big stars, big strategy, it works. The games were great. The games were close and full of theater. the Harper home run, and then obviously Venezuela pulls it back. Just pretty much awesome. And this isn't a knock against the Marlins, but, I mean, it's going to sound like it, and I guess it kind of is. You know, you wouldn't peg Miami as a great baseball town based on the Marlins, and yet it was the center of the baseball world for those few games.

6:18I wouldn't be surprised if Rob Manfred makes it the permanent home of the WBC because it makes so much sense. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about Manfred. Commissioner Rob Manfred, very notably on hand, handing out the medals. So if anybody thought that Major League Baseball and the World Baseball Classic were kind of existing in the same orbit but not really connected, felt very connected with him there literally handing out the prizes, how big of a deal is that to you? It is a huge deal. Look, let's try to recap here Rob Manfred's tenure as a commissioner. I mean, the previous commissioner handed him the keys on the back end there of my suspension.

6:54And the job that Rob has done the first five years, you can say, OK, pretty good trying to get the house in order. But the last five years have been Hall of Fame material for Rob Manfred, starting with the clock, starting with eliminating the shift, really making the game a little bit more dynamic, more technology driven. And the game is flourishing under his watch. Now, with all that said, this year, before I answer your question, will be the most consequential year, not only Rob Manfred's tenure, but maybe in the last 25 years for baseball because of the CBA. Yeah. All right. We're going to get to that in a second.

7:27I just got too excited. I know. I know. You're jumping ahead. That's OK. That's OK. It's my job to keep you on track. But tell me what, I mean, if you're advising, Rob, you talk to him. What is, what did you see at World Baseball Classic that he needs to be especially aware of? Whether it is about the fan base, whether it's about the players, like, what are the things that he's going back to headquarters here in New York and saying, hey, guys, we've got to do these two or three things based on what I saw in Miami? A lot of it is, I would say, continue doing exactly what you're doing. Him and Dan Halem and company and Noah, they're just doing a terrific job.

7:59I would say when he goes around this spring training to meet with all the guys and early in the year in April where he usually gets around to talk to all 30 teams, I would not only meet with the team, but before I would meet with the team, I would get like eight or 10 guys in a private dinner and go to a nice steakhouse and just ask questions. what's important to you guys how do we make the game better treat them like 50 50 partners as they are and not as i'm not saying that rob would do this but as players sometimes you feel like you're just um an asset and that's it rather than a partner so i think the more he can get to know these guys a little bit more personal experience with these guys i think the better he's going to be yeah well and obviously you see that and i know aim to practice it in the nba the nba is probably be better than any other league when it comes to player engagement with the league office.

8:48Adam Silver, I think, is probably the gold standard in terms of those sorts of player relationships. And I think, you can be honest here, that is now assumed of owners in the NBA, and I think increasingly in the WNBA, that you have to have strong relationships with your players. The players have to have a voice. That's not negotiable anymore, right? Well, the proof is in just what happened this past week with the agreement where both sides started very far apart. For the WNBA. For the WNBA. Yeah. And obviously Adam sits at the very top of that chain. Kathy, our commissioner, did a fantastic job.

9:22But we're so far apart in a very short time through a lot of conversation and give both sides a lot of credit. They came together on what was probably the toughest negotiation in their history for sure. Oh, 100%. For sure. because it was a time and a movement, and the players got exactly what they wanted. I think the owners will do well over time, and both sides are real partners moving forward, which is great.

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10:24So speaking of CBAs, that's what, as you mentioned, that's what is on everyone's mind when it comes to Major League Baseball. As the players, as the PA is going into this, when it comes to basketball, you're an owner. But when it comes to baseball, you'll always be a player. So if you're in the mind of the PA right now, what are the non-negotiables? What are you coming in and just saying we have to get these things? I think we want more teams to be competitive. If you look at baseball, you have 30 teams. and probably going into every year, just by the nature of market size, which is unfortunate, you have 15 that hope they have a chance, but really seven or eight chance really have a chance, seven or eight teams.

11:12And the other 15s are just there to kind of go through the motions. Overall, that's not sustainable and it's not good for the game. So you want, if Nick is a free agent, if Jason's a free agent, you want 20 teams bidding for you, not just the top seven. And if those teams have a shortstop, then Jason's out of a job or he has to, you know, kind of settle for whatever's out there. Or, you know, change positions and maybe win a World Series. I don't know. Or change positions. Very dangerous move, but it works sometimes. You want competitive balance. Obviously, service time is a big one, right? Sometimes if Jason is ready to play in the big leagues, we'll keep you down with the Atlanta Braves farm system because we want to really maximize your six full years with the Atlanta Braves before you become a free agent.

11:55and a lot of teams instead of bringing you up even though you're ready we'll keep you up an extra three or four months down in the minors because we don't want that clock to start so manipulating of that is a big thing instead of being six years a free agent maybe become a free agent after four years because the trend now is after 32 a lot of guys they're just basically going home when I played guys used to play to 37, 38, 40 so that's another big one and then the biggest one which is fighting were just a salary cap which players have never had. Marvin Miller, when he started the union many, many decades ago, handed the baton to Don Fear, to Michael Wiener, to Tony.

12:33And now, just for folks at home, it's going to be Rob Manford and Dan Halem on the legal side for Major League Baseball. And Tony Clark is out, the last head of the union. Bruce Meyer is in, who's very connected to Scott Boris. Yeah. Scott Boris, of course, the agent, was your agent, was Juan Soto's agent, is agent to a couple of very key players now. All right, let me ask you the question. Should there be a salary cap? I don't like the word salary cap. What I would try to find, is there a way to make, number one, if you have 800 players in the union, make more players more money? If the numbers sit today that 80 % of the salaries go to 10 % of the players, I don't think that's a good thing.

13:16I'd love to see it a little bit more democratic. Maybe you up the minimum for rookies. But if a guy like Shohei Otani doesn't make 70 and he makes 66, I think he'll be just fine with that. So elevate the bottom a little bit. And then create a little bit of an opportunity. Look, Oklahoma City almost spend$800 million in three players, which is awesome. In the NBA. In the NBA. How do we get the Marlins, the Kansas City Royals, to be able, maybe not to do that, 800 is a lot, But can they spend a couple hundred million dollars in one given offseason? I think today, because the way the business and the CBA is constructed, I don't think that's possible or physically responsible.

13:57Right. So let me ask you a question because I'm still, with your help and others, coming to learn sort of the intricacies of baseball and the differences in the business model. Isn't part of this owing to the fact that there is no national TV deal? I mean, isn't that one of the things that does help the NBA and the NFL certainly have this sort of much more shared largesse across all the leagues? So how much does the media sort of element factor into this? The media is everything, right? Because even if you think about the NBA, when you invest in an NBA team as a general partner or as a limited partner, basically your bet is simple.

14:3660 % of your bet is on NBA Inc., meaning the national TV deal and national resources that gets spread evenly across 30 owners, 30 teams. That's shared revenue. That's shared revenue, right? Yeah. Which means if you're the Knicks or the Lakers in the two biggest market, you get the same check as Oklahoma City from the media national TV that was just signed a year ago for$77 billion over 11 years. One year is behind us, 10 years to go. When it comes to baseball, it goes to the history of the three bets that these leagues made. NFL and the NBA made a national bet and not a regional bet, meaning that they decided to collect all their IP and go all in with the national.

15:21Short term was a good bet, not a great bet. The previous commissioner made a bet, which was for baseball. Selig. Yes. Let's take a regional bet, not a national bet, which is why. And by the way, that worked really, really well when everybody was watching TV and before the cut cutting started, they were making hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions collectively from the regional network deals. as that's kind of been cut back, then where you sit today, just for some context, and that'll change very soon with the opt-out of the NFL. NFL makes$110 billion over 11 years, which they have an opt-out.

16:02NBA,$77 billion over 11. And baseball's at$10 billion over, I think,$7 or something, which tells you the drop-off, right? So now you got to think about like, okay, different world, how do we rewrite our constitution in many ways and bring it all back to the IP? And it's interesting because Netflix has opening day, which we'll talk about. How do you now push that forward for the next 10, 15 years? Not only so that the game can survive, but more importantly, so it can thrive. Right. And presumably so, I mean, I do think this is all of a piece in the sense of so that everybody can participate in it.

16:40Because this regional sports model, is not, I think I can say this pretty confidently, is not the right model for now, for today in 2026. So let's talk about Netflix for a second, which is they're going to have opening day, Yankees versus Giants. Reportedly, it's a deal that they paid. It's worth$50 million over the next three years, which is kind of amazing. An amazing stat as a traditional broadcaster, but also a podcaster and someone who understands media really well. What do you make of Netflix being in this position? I love it. And I mean, anytime you have a business, what are they worth, over$100 billion market cap now?

17:19Coming into a space like baseball, it's a great day for baseball. And not only did they get a fantastic game and an exclusive opener on the 25th on Wednesday, they're bringing out all the stars. They have Sabathia. They have Matt Vesgurgeon doing the play-by-play. See Sabathia and Hunter Pence. And then for the pregame, they have Al Duncan, Barry Bonds, which is huge, first time ever, Albert Pujols, and Anthony Rizzo. So they have all the stars out, and they have a great game, and they have complete exclusivity, much like the NFL would have on any given Wednesday. Yeah, exactly. Well, and I think we really saw that in football, the Netflix Christmas game did huge numbers.

18:05I mean, a lot of people have Netflix. Netflix, pretty powerful. I mean, that's not a controversial statement. Before we get too far from the CBA conversation, I want to ask you about a lockout. This is a really interesting quote that one of our producers found and shared with me. Last year, 2025, Rob Manfred, the commissioner, told The Athletic, quote, an offseason lockout should be considered the new norm. In a bizarre way, it's actually a positive. The great thing about offseason lockouts is the leverage that exists gets applied between the bargaining parties. I mean, to me, that's a wild statement of like, yeah, we're going to have a lockout, bros.

18:41Like, this is going to happen. Do you think that's a good strategy? I think to the business community, I think our listeners will get that and say, OK, that's that's that's a very negotiation. measured quote negotiations. I think the way that plays in the locker room, unfortunately, in major league clubhouses across 30 teams, it's almost seen as bulletin material where players can look at that and say, huh, are those fighting words or not? So in these kinds of cases, I just don't like poking the bear. Yeah. Because I've spoken to a lot of people on both sides, owners and players, and they're both as confident and as dug in as I've ever seen them in 30 years.

19:20Yeah. And speaking of which, you were in a lockout in 95. Take us back there. You've talked about this a little bit before, but I do wonder psychologically what it does to a player. I mean, yes, you're worried about you want to play the game, you love the game, etc., etc. This is the deal. This is Bloomberg. Let's talk about money. You got to be worried about your money at that point because you know it's going to come back eventually. But there's real financial stakes. I would imagine. Did you feel that? Huge, huge financial stakes. And let's not, you know, we have to double click. That is the first year with the head of the union and Bruce Myers.

20:02Yeah. Right. That's not like the ideal time to just ease someone in the back door. Right. Here it is. The most important consequential negotiation in the history. Well, this wasn't on purpose. No, it wasn't on purpose. It was a little bit of a curveball. But but just keep that in mind because I think that's important. Why? because when Don Fear would come in and give us three-hour speeches in spring training, I mean, he was an incredible storyteller. He was a fantastic negotiator. He learned under Marvin Miller, the one that started the union before him. And he had this gravity about Don Fear.

20:38And by the way, Gene Orza, his number two, was just as tough and just as nasty and awesome, right? Yeah. Guys you want to go to war with. Bruce is still trying to get his feel. He's been there for a minute. It's not like he hasn't been there, but it's one thing. There's a great saying in basketball that says, boy, those six inches that you sit between the head coaching job and the assistant, while there's only a few inches, boys, it's around the world. So it's interesting to see how he's going to react when all the attention is on him. Yeah. How does it feel? It feels scary. If you think about it, Jason, five and a half years is the average career in Major League Baseball.

21:14And the numbers going down, not up. So if you think about it, Jason, if you have five years to collect W-2 income in your career and you give away one or half, you give it away almost 20%. It is scary if you have a young wife, young kids, a lot of responsibility, a mortgage, two cars, three cars, private schools, life is expensive, inflation. There's a lot of things that go on. And when you read the headlines, the union is really, really strong. Both things can be true with a lot of fear underneath. Yeah, because, I mean, listen, there's I can't think of another business, maybe media, but but certainly sports is one where, you know, somebody's coming for your job.

21:55And so if you're a year on in your career, that's one year that like they're coming for you. So I would just imagine from an athlete's perspective, the psychology has got to be very difficult, especially when, you know, this is a CBA that doesn't – the current CBA doesn't run out until the end of this calendar year. And yet we were talking about it last year. It's just – I mean talk about the elephant in the room that you're always thinking about. I would imagine in these sorts of times, and again, you were early in your career, but you talk to players all the time. They must be talking to their agents.

22:31They must be talking to their financial advice. Sort of like gaming out how this may go, right? Yeah, I've had owners tell me, it doesn't matter. The game has to be fixed. It's broken. If we have to lock out the whole year, we will. I've heard players say, we'll never take a salary cap. Many players, if we have to set out a whole year, we will. Now, when I was in the room, I remember Don Feer doing a great speech. Everyone hurrah. Everyone comes to the middle. Players Jr. Yeah, one, two, three. Yes, we're together. The next two or three days, real conversations around the lunchroom, around the stretch the next morning.

23:04Guys saying, is there a real chance of locking out? And this goes a lot from the young guys that have an incredible amount of uncertainty. Yeah. So my point is sometimes don't believe all the headlines. Don't believe the quote from Rob. Don't believe the quote from Bruce Myers that you'll be reading. there's a lot of sub conversations going on underneath. Yeah. That is a lot more measured and realistic and truthful. Yeah. And I mean, listen, there is real, I think, especially now, and I can say this maybe more easily than you can here in 2026, the existential threat to a sport is even more real than it used to be.

23:41And what I mean by that is our time is so divided by so many different things. And so if something goes away, baseball goes away for a year, people kind of move on. They focus more on the NBA. They focus more on football. Those sports are swallowing the world. There is so much at risk at every level, Jason. I mean, if you think about the four major sports in America, right? NHL, NFL, NBA, and MLB. If you look at enterprise values of these franchises, ironically, number one is NHL with 27 % rise over the last three or four years. 27. NFL and NBA are both at 19%. Baseball is sub 5%. Why? It's because there's uncertainty around the CBA.

24:23There's uncertainty about people cutting the cords. There's uncertainty about where is the guaranteed revenue that investment bankers can underwrite as a paper that's investable, right? Now, in the other side of that, I think is the best time in over 10 years to invest into a Major League Baseball team because you invest right into the teeth of all this uncertainty. And I think that's good. And your bet is simple, that things will get a little bit better and the game will continue to thrive. And I think those are a pretty fair bet. Is there going to be a salary cap? No idea. Is there going to be revenue?

24:57I have no idea. But I can make a bet that it's going to get better once things get agreed on.