蓝色杰伊如何保持财政贴心

职业棒球已经发展到了它的长期存在，因为Anson在18世纪后期的芝加哥白袜加上了Jackie Robinson于1947年的障碍博士举行了2000年代的类固醇丑闻。游戏的经济学也发生了巨大的变化。主要联赛棒球现已成为全球企业，具有大型企业赞助商，年收入为75亿美元。

播放器薪水均为级别，使得高盛首席执行官Lloyd Blankfein腮红。虽然1993年，当时纽约洋基队将于2013年5月结束的纽约洋基队以低于5000万美元，纽约洋基队将于2013年5月举行约1.1亿美元 - 仅为受伤球员挂钩的最高左右，达到5000万美元在残疾人名单上。

Even in 1993, though, managing the finances of a ball club was no can of corn. Michael Peltz, now editor of亚博赞助欧冠，探讨了'93蓝色杰伊和首席执行官Paul Beeston，因为球队的财务ace曾努力制作胜利的胜利者。

阅读下面的完整故事。

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蓝色杰伊如何保持财政贴心

By Michael Peltz

亚博赞助欧冠
1993年7月

The national pastime is caught in a financial squeeze play. Luckily, Toronto's Paul Beeston has a head for finance as well as baseball.

永远不抱怨,乔治•斯泰因布里纳a gripe about Paul Beeston, CEO and finance ace of the Toronto Blue Jays. "He absolutely refuses to wear socks, even in the middle of winter," mutters the New York Yankees owner. When the Blue Jays won the World Series last year, relates Beeston with a loud chuckle, "George called me a beach bum and sent me a pair of socks."

尽管贝斯顿的野蛮赤膊（他只是喜欢感受到微风，尽管他坚持认为他在冬天服用他的脚），那么有道理的47岁的会计师在老板的好的乔布斯中。“多伦多是一流的操作，它反映了经营它的人，”斯坦布伦纳说。尽管携带了主要联盟棒球的最胖的工资单 - 约49,000,000美元 - 杰伊表明，与洛杉矶道奇队不同，纽约大都会，是的，斯坦布伦纳自己的洋基队，有可能花费很多钱，仍然可以花很多钱WINS列和PROMITS列中的数字。

史密斯学院的经济学家Andrew Zimbalist作者of Baseball and Billions, estimates that the Blue Jays rake in more than $25 million a year. A December 1992 report on the state of the game by baseball's independent Economic Study Committee, whose members included former Federal Reserve Board chief Paul Volcker, put the Blue Jays' annual internal rate of return from 1976 to 1991 at close to 16 percent. "We don't make nearly as much money as we used to make," contends Beeston, "but I wouldn't be sitting here if we were losing money." (Brewer John Labatt Ltd., the Jays' majority owner, does not disclose the team's financial results, but they can be reasonably estimated; see below.)

In a business that traditionally has been run like a sport, Beeston has endeavored to run the sport like a business. He and his five-person finance team draw up an elaborate operating game plan each season that bristles with a different kind of baseball stats: detailed cash flow, revenue and profit forecasts. When Beeston joined the Jays in 1976, his rigorous financial approach was as rare in baseball as a perfect game. Regarded as a capable administrator and -- vitally in these free-agent days -- a savvy negotiator, Beeston is described by Richard Ravitch, head of the Major League Baseball Player Relations Committee, as "one of the smartest businessmen I've ever met." Adds Ravitch, "It's not surprising the Blue Jays do well."

Fun business

Yet even Toronto, with its winning team, loyal fans and astute management, is caught in Major League Baseball's squeeze between flat revenues and soaring player salaries. "I don't know where the money is going to come from for salaries to keep going up," admits Beeston. The Blue Jays' own payroll has shot skyward like a Dave Winfield pop foul, from $10.6 million in 1985 to almost $50 million today. "A few years ago I would have told you you'd never see a $2 million salary, and look how wrong I was," says Beeston.

多伦多在过去十年中，多伦多持续成功 - 猛扑在棒球中的总体记录 - 毫无疑问归因于其所有权和管理的连续性。Labatt和两位合作伙伴在1977年为普瑞岭美国联赛特许经营权拨款700万美元，然后两年前，啤酒单独支付了6000万美元，购买了蒙特利尔金融家和出版商R. Howard韦伯斯特的遗产仍持有的45％股权，占90％的份额。（加拿大帝国商业拥有10％。）

If the franchise were a free agent, it would probably fetch upwards of $200 million. "The stability of the Blue Jays ownership sets the team apart," says Pete Bavasi, the team's first top executive and now president of Dow Jones & Co.'s SportsTicker service.

Beeston didn't grow up in Welland, Ontario, dreaming of becoming a Major League bookkeeper someday. Though he's never been much of an athlete, he has always been a big sports fan. His father used to take him to baseball games in Detroit, and he still cheers for the Tigers -- unless they're playing the Blue Jays. So when the young Coopers & Lybrand accountant was offered a job balancing expansion-team Toronto's books, he lunged at the chance. He became president in 1989, though he'd already been running the show since 1981, and CEO last year. "It's a fun business," says Beeston.

但业务除外。去年比较他的比斯顿job to running a law or an accounting firm: "We are a people business, we're not widgets." Points out executive vice president Pat Gillick, who as general manager handles all matters that fall inside the baselines, such as player development, scouting and trades: "The only assets we've got are the players. It's important to be able to work with them."

贝斯顿，首席执行官是粉丝，喜欢亲自了解他的资产。虽然当蓝杰斯在展览体育场时，他能够花更多的时间与球员一起度过 - 他的办公室在俱乐部院旁边，仍然努力在每个家庭家庭期间两三次访问它们两三次。“他们没有达到他们没有像Gillick和Beeston这样的人的地方，”前蓝杰伊投手吉米钥匙说。

Maintaining a good rapport with the players helps, of course, when it comes to renegotiating contracts. Beeston and general manager Gillick handle the large, multiyear contracts and the high-profile free agents; assistant GM Gord Ash is responsible for the smaller deals.

Beeston almost never misses a Blue Jays home game, which he watches from Skybox 337, where "we don't wear ties," he says. Or, in his case, hose. He also tries to catch five to ten games on the road, especially if the team is in a pennant race. When there's a night game in Toronto, though, Beeston breaks for home on the final pitch, so he can hustle back to his wife and teenage son and daughter by 11:00 p.m.

Beeston's management style is not that of the typical buttoned-down -- and sock-clad -- executive. From the moment he arrives at the stadium, usually by 7:30 a.m., he's a Charlie Hustle of constant motion, prowling the corridors, greeting colleagues in his booming public-address-system voice, radiating enthusiasm. "His |upbeat style makes him effective," says Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig, chairman of baseball's Executive Committee and the sport's de facto commissioner.

Toronto and the loan arranger

Beeston的金融方案没有一种简单的春季培训语言。他的金融团队每年夏天都会通过对收入预测进行困扰，这是一个过程中的一个过程，因为收入在美国和加拿大人。对于大量的最终商业计划，最终在Labatt Ceo George Taylor的桌子桌子上厚重，一切都被转换回加拿大元。一旦该计划获得Labatt批准，蓝色杰伊通过CIBC处理的转发货币合同锁定汇率。Beeston还依赖于银行所有者获得很少使用的信贷额度。

The biggest chunk of the Jays' revenues still comes from gate receipts, about half the total. For many other teams, broadcasting revenue has outpaced ticket sales, thanks to the league's $1.06 billion television contract with CBS. However, that lucrative deal (Barry Bonds, eat your heart out) expires at the end of this year, and CBS won't be taking up its option. The new national television agreement with ABC and NBC is expected to slash the league's broadcast revenues by as much as 50 percent. "The impact for the Blue Jays will not be as dramatic as it would be for a club that relies heavily on that income," notes vice president for business operations Bob Nicholson.

Gillick and his baseball people next calculate player pay. "We lay out our payroll based on what |Beeston's projections are," Gillick says. "Once our financial controls are in place, I can go ahead and make a move |such as trading for Mets pitcher David Cone during the homestretch of last year's pennant drive , as long as it's within the budget."

For the third consecutive year, the Jays set a major league attendance record in 1992 by selling more than 4 million tickets. Toronto regularly sells an incredible 99 percent of the 50,516 seats in the SkyDome, compared with a leaguewide average of about 56 percent. Before the first pitch was thrown this season, Toronto had sold 3.4 million tickets, at an average of $11.60 a seat.

A winning team is baseball's best sales gimmick, of course, and the Toronto metropolitan area affords a potential fan club of 3.7 million people. But it doesn't hurt that the Blue Jays play in the 31-story, state-of-the-art SkyDome, with its retractable roof, 346-room hotel, 650-seat center field restaurant and Hard Rock Cafe. Labatt and a half-dozen companies are negotiating to buy Ontario's 50 percent stake in the dome.

Toronto's long financial winning streak notwithstanding, Major League Baseball faces a money crunch. The game's declining popularity, and the consequent decrease in ticket sales, will compound the effect of the drop in TV revenues. "Baseball's revenues are going to stop growing," warns economist Zimbalist. Volcker's committee calculated that from 1985 to 1991 annual growth in player salaries outpaced revenues 10 percent to 9 percent. And the biggest salary bonanza has occurred in the past couple of years. The Blue Jays' 1993 player payroll alone comes close to the total revenue for half the teams in the league.

Senior managing director Paul Much of investment bank Houlihan Lokey Howard and Zukin, who specializes in the sports business, points out that there's an inherent financial disparity among big-league teams: "The revenue side is driven by local economics, while the cost side |salaries is nationally driven." Teams like the Blue Jays and the Yankees share just a quarter of their revenues with other teams (and vice versa). No wonder small-market clubs like Milwaukee complain that they can't afford to compete for the top players in the free-agent era.

Baseball's new economics put even more of a premium on winning. "Baseball is merely an alternative form of entertainment," says banker Much. "If you put a good product in front of your fans, you can turn those fans into customers." A winning season not only draws more fans to the park, but it also fills lucrative skyboxes and permits clubs to command more for local television and radio rights.

Winning isn't everything, however. Even the high-flying Blue Jays have had to part with such players as Cone, Key, Winfield and Tom Henke, who were bid away in the free-agent frenzy. "We couldn't afford to keep those guys," says Beeston with a shrug. Adds GM Gillick: "Now when you make a mistake on a player, you're talking a couple million dollars. It forces you to be more selective."

无论是现在都在多伦多或其他地方，蓝色杰伊的1992年冠军队的成员本赛季统称为6800万美元，或比多伦多的当前工资单近40％。“我们今年的目标是在田野上放置优质产品，而不会显着增加薪水，”Beeston说。（截至6月中旬，蓝杰在美国联赛东部的第二名，落后于底特律老虎。）

Toronto believes that the best way to build winning teams consistently is to invest in scouting, drafting and developing new talent. "Player development is our version of R&D," explains vice president Nicholson. Toronto lavishes money on its well-stocked farm system, enabling it to replenish its roster when players are lost to injury or free agency and also to dangle trade bait.

Beeston对经济现实的双手抓住对棒球所有者来说令人印象深刻。球员Orza，球员联盟的副总律师，主要联盟棒球运动员协会 - 与业主的劳动协议在本赛季后到期 - 宣布，“如果所有28个队伍都有保罗贝斯顿，我的工作将是不必要的。”

Well, what if, in effect, they had? Baseball hasn't had a commissioner since Fay Vincent was sacked last year, and Beeston's name has come up more than once. "If baseball decides to look to its own ranks for a commissioner, Paul is certainly one of the guys at the top of the list," says Steinbrenner. Beeston, who's on the search committee for a new commissioner, would rather find a more willing candidate. "As commissioner, you'd be cheering for a seven-game World Series," he says sensibly. "Instead, I'd like to see a four-game sweep for the Blue Jays."

多伦多蓝杰

Paul Beeston, CEO

THE 1993 SEASON:

Estimated revenues:

门收据：4600万美元的媒体合约：3000万美元的体育场：1100万美元的许可和其他来源：600万美元总收入：9300万美元

Estimated expenses:

球员工资：4900万美元的运动员发展：800万美元的旅行，前台，体育场和其他费用：800万美元总费用：6500万美元

估计营业收入：2800万美元