Julio Urias of the Los Angeles Dodgers celebrates after defeating the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2020 MLB World Series at Globe Life Field.
Tom Pennington/Getty Images
The Los Angeles Dodgers are the 2020 World Series champions. It’s the franchise’s seventh championship in team history and first since 1988.
In a one-of-a-kind season that spanned only 60 regular season? games and numerous game postponements due to the coronavirus pandemic, MLB was still able to crown a champion.
But it came at a price.
The Athletic reported that Major League Baseball lost roughly $3.1 billion during the 2020 season.
The league’s EBITDA — earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — showed a loss of about $2.7 billion, according to The Athletic.
This figure would break down to an average loss of about $100 million per team, although the losses vary by team despite some revenue sharing measures in place.
Team owners have been laying off workers to cope with the financial losses related to the coronavirus pandemic. Scouts, stadium workers and sales staff have been hit particularly hard from the layoffs.
The $3.1 billion loss is large, but still lower than the $4 billion loss owners expected at the beginning of the season.
“We are going to be at historic high levels of debt,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told Sportico on Monday. “And it’s going to be difficult for the industry to weather another year where we don’t have fans in the ballpark and have other limitations on how much we can’t play and how we can play.”
The losses and financial uncertainty may not stop with the conclusion of the 2020 MLB season.
“It’s absolutely certain, I know, that we’re going to have to have conversations with the MLBPA about what 2021 is going to look like,” Manfred said. “It’s difficult to foresee a situation right now where everything’s just normal. And obviously, if it’s not normal we’re going to have to have conversations about it.”
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