Even though formal bargaining between MLB and the MLB Players Association is still nearly a year away, the league already has an emerging plan for the talks: Appeal directly to individual players to make the case for large-scale change. 

Speaking at a recent investor day for the publicly traded Braves, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said the owners plan to work as much as possible with rank-and-file players as they look to reshape baseball’s economic system.

“The strategy is to get directly to the players,” Manfred said. “I don’t think the leadership of this union is anxious to lead the way to change. So we need to energize the workforce in order to get them familiar with or supportive of the idea that maybe changing the system could be good for everybody.”

That messaging has already begun as Manfred has made his annual tours to meet with players in every market. 

The current, five-year labor deal between the owners and players expires in December 2026, with talks likely to begin early next year. Manfred said earlier this month that no decisions have been made among clubs about whether they’ll push for a salary cap, something the MLBPA has resisted for decades. MLB owners, however, have broad notions in mind, including restructured revenue-sharing, new measures around “cost certainty, predictability, and competitive balance” in player compensation, and having a more defined period around free agency. 

“Other sports, they have free agency, it’s about a month. There’s a lot of bidders,” Manfred said. “It’s a great marketing opportunity for the sport. Players have their choice of where to go. All positive. Our free agency is like the Bataan Death March. It starts the day after the World Series, and in February, really, really, good players are still wandering around the landscape.”

Lessons From the Past

Part of Manfred’s thinking around having a more direct appeal in the next labor round stems from player sentiment in the last one. Amid a bitter, 99-day lockout, the union’s executive subcommittee voted against the labor deal that MLB proposed and ultimately was ratified. That approval, a 26–12 vote that ended the lockout, happened after nearly every other MLBPA player representative disagreed with the executive subcommittee and supported the agreement. 

Another lockout is widely anticipated around the sport. The labor situation, meanwhile, is developing as Manfred and MLB intend to significantly retool baseball’s media presence in 2028, when the league’s current national deals expire, and repackage those rights with local ones. 

“We are pursuing a [media] strategy not dissimilar to what the NBA did,” Manfred said, referring to that league’s $77 billion set of new rights deals with Amazon, ESPN, and NBCUniversal that begin this fall. 

The MLBPA attacked Manfred’s comments. 

“At a time of resurgent attendance, record revenues, and increasing franchise values, MLB should be focused on further promoting our sport,” MLBPA executive director Tony Clark said in a statement to The Athletic. “Instead, their stated plan is once again to try to divide players from each other and their union in service of a system that would add to the owners’ profits and franchise values, while prohibiting clubs from fully competing to put the best product on the field for the fans and limited player compensation, guarantees, and flexibility.” 

The revenue-sharing era in college sports officially begins Tuesday, when Division I athletic departments can directly pay student-athletes.

The monumental day arrives less than a month after the House v. NCAA settlement was finally approved, following months of deliberation and a lengthy objection process.

In addition to offering $2.8 billion in damages to former players who weren’t allowed to accept NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals before the NCAA began allowing them in 2021, D-I schools can now pay up to $20.5 million to all current players in their athletic departments. That “college salary cap” number will increase incrementally over the next 10 years, during the lifetime of the injunctive relief.

Football teams are expected to get the vast majority of revenue-sharing dollars—roughly 75% in many cases. Men’s and women’s basketball programs are expected to receive the next-highest amounts of what’s left. Most schools will likely allocate 5% or less to sports outside of football and basketball.

Strange New Times

Preparations for the revenue-sharing era have seen schools take some unprecedented steps over the past year as they sort out the logistics of paying players:

• Many schools are disbanding official NIL collectives that have previously helped pay players.
• New fees around sporting event tickets and standard student fees are being introduced.
• Conferences are working on an enforcement agreement to bind schools to the terms of the settlement.
• Dozens of D-I Olympic sports programs at colleges have been either cut or consolidated.
• Schools are exploring bringing private-equity investment into their athletic departments, while conferences hold off, for now.
• Buyout clauses will be on the table for player contracts should they choose to transfer.

Dollars and Sense

As top athletic programs transition from using NIL money to revenue-sharing for their primary resource of paying players, this next football and basketball season will mark a unique circumstance for stars to cash in on both categories.

Last football season, the term “$20 million roster” was thrown around for top teams like Oregon and Ohio State. That referred to the amount of NIL money players on said teams were making.

This year, top football teams may once again have $20 million in NIL money allocated to their players, in addition to sharing roughly $15 million of revenue with football players, too.

However, under the oversight of the newly created College Sports Commission, all new NIL deals over $600 will be vetted to determine whether the deal represents fair-market value. That is aimed at preventing NIL collectives from funneling money to players without actually having them participate in an endorsement deal.

So, any large spike in football-player pay this season may be only temporary.