{"id":18674,"date":"2022-03-04T04:14:51","date_gmt":"2022-03-04T04:14:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/03\/04\/what-mlb-may-need-to-do-after-it-stops-its-player-lockout-bullshit\/"},"modified":"2022-03-04T04:14:51","modified_gmt":"2022-03-04T04:14:51","slug":"what-mlb-may-need-to-do-after-it-stops-its-player-lockout-bullshit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/03\/04\/what-mlb-may-need-to-do-after-it-stops-its-player-lockout-bullshit\/","title":{"rendered":"What MLB May Need To Do After It Stops Its Player Lockout Bullshit"},"content":{"rendered":"

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from the you-need-the-fans<\/i> dept<\/h3>\n

If you\u2019re not a sports fan, or not an American, you may not be aware that there is currently an owner\u2019s lockout occurring in Major League Baseball. We\u2019ve talked a bit in the past about some of the bullshit MLB is pulling with all of this, namely its decision to strip out<\/a> all references to current players from its website. But in those discussions we never really got into what this lockout is or why it\u2019s occurring. Let me give you a quick primer.<\/p>\n

For starters, this is not a player strike<\/a>. Ownership and players are currently negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA). The owners locked the players out of MLB facilities in December, claiming it did so as a defensive measure. This simply is not true. There was nothing in the pervious CBA that required a lockout once that CBA expired. MLB could have gone on with its normal schedule this year while it continued to negotiate a new CBA. Instead, MLB has imposed artificial deadline after artificial deadline and then blamed the players for not giving in to its bad-faith negotiations. MLB recently announced that the start of the season would be delayed and the games not played would simply be lost, again blaming the players for this<\/a>. That isn\u2019t true. MLB is choosing unilaterally to cancel MLB games.<\/p>\n

You may or may not care about any of this. Where this crosses over into Techdirt territory, however, is what is going to happen when an inevitable deal is reached and games resume. Why? Well, if the last prolonged work stoppage in MLB is any indication<\/a>, teams will likely resume play with diminished attendance in the stands and viewership numbers down for teams across the board. Baseball fans will be very, very angry about all of this and the reprecussions of the lockout have the potential to be felt for years<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So what should MLB prepare to do to claw back as many of those fans as possible once games resume? Many of the things that it should have been doing to grow the game all along, except that this time they might have not choice:<\/p>\n