Major Leauge Baseball owners not named Steve Cohen have long waged a PR campaign that attempts to set them up as mom-and-pop operations, community pillars prioritizing stewardship of fandom and civic pride. For what it’s worth, Cohen has actually succeeded in the latter portion by restoring full pay to employees and increasing local philanthropic efforts. Elsewhere, owners have claimed baseball “isn’t very profitable” in general and that “the scale of losses across the league [was] biblical” due to the absence of fans in the shortened 2020 season.
Thing is, there’s a difference between actually losing money and just not making as much as what was initially projected.