How Much Will The Cincinnati Reds 2025 Payroll Be After Losing TV Deal? | Chatterbox MLB Off-Season
Nick Kirby is once again joined by naval intelligence officer James Fox, this time from London! James did extensive research into the Reds finances and breaks down the Reds estimated payroll and how it compares to MLB averages. They also discuss the Reds leaving Diamond Sports Group (FanDuel Sports Network/Bally Sports) and how that might impact the off-season. James also gives his projections on what the Reds should spend in comparison to the Atlanta Braves.
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We focus on Nick Krall as the guy responsible for the Reds public facing player acquisition, today we talk about what resides within CEO Phil Castellini and CFO/COO Doug Healy’s scope of responsibility in setting payroll. Up front, I think it’s important to note how the Reds have now combined chief financial officer and chief operating officer roles into one for Doug Healy. To me, that signals the Reds ownership group is prioritizing shareholder compensation over operations management. You pick somebody with a finance background to make money and this C-suite combination role signals that making money is this Reds ownership group’s top priority.
Revenues are going up across baseball and we are going to jump into some details shortly. I wanted to touch on the value of the Reds TV money in 2025 to build upon last week in what you talked about with Austin Layton. The Reds need somebody in the front office with a background in broadcast rights, streaming industry contacts, and forward looking long-term decision making in mind. That challenge is up to Phil Castellini and Doug Healy to figure out but let’s go over the Reds TV value in 2025 and what is acceptable.
Diamond Sports Group RSN Primer:
Key Takeaway: On the conservative side, 2025 Reds TV rights are probably worth $65-70M in fair market value and getting around $52-56M is probably an acceptable settling point. The Reds drew the 4th highest RSN ratings with an 82 win team in 2023, sold the most number of sponsorships of any team in MLB, and have a sports-rich consumption market hungry to watch any good product. If the Reds win 90 games, the Reds might be at the top of RSN markets.
The bigger goal should be pooling a centralized model like the NFL as much as possible with as many teams that are willing to participate. MLB could eliminate black outs in participating markets, opt for multi-modal media delivery, benefit disadvantaged smaller markets, and make the collective sum value of MLB broadcasting more valuable than the individual parts.
What would give me confidence in that 2025 TV deal figure? In 2019, DSG as a subsidiary of Sinclair used a leveraged buyout model popularized back in the 1980s. It’s a model that uses debt to finance an acquisition instead of straight cash. In corporate profitability speak, EBITDA is a term that means earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization but in layman speak it just means a positive number means something is profitable. DSG is still running a positive EBITDA every year so far and has projected future EBITDA growth through streaming and digital ad revenue. The problem with DSG is that they used the LBO model and owe interest since they didn’t buy the RSNs with cash. So that’s why they are in bankruptcy proceedings and not because operations are losing money.