Major League Baseball set a new record for gross revenue this past season, bringing in $10.3 billion. That followed a season in which the league tallied $10 billion and doesn’t even include the $2.6 billion windfall from Disney’s purchase of BAMTech. According to Maury Brown of Forbes, inflation-adjusted gross revenues have increased by 377 percent since 1992, when Allan Huber Selig took over as commissioner.
Player compensation, however, has not increased at a commensurate level. It’s hard for some fans to fathom when they see what seems like astronomical sums being handed out even to those players they deem mediocre, but it’s all relative.