Extended Baseball Lockout Could Damage the Sport
MLB Owners Should Learn a Lesson from the NHL and NFL
At 11:59 PM on Dec. 1, 2021, the Collective Bargaining Agreement between Major League Baseball owners and players expired. Less than two hours before the CBA ended, team owners voted unanimously to force a lockout. This isn’t the first time baseball has endured an extended work stoppage. There have been eight strikes and lockouts in MLB history. The most recent one, in 1994, cancelled the entire season, including the World Series. Since then, things have been relatively calm in the sport, until the most recent CBA expired. Fans, including many who remember the ’94 disaster, are already worried that the lockout will cancel spring training and even regular season games.
The NFL hasn’t had a lockout since 1987. The last time pro football faced a serious work stoppage, in 2011, cooler heads prevailed and the owners and players’ union came to an agreement to prevent losing any games. The NFL and NFLPA seemed to learn the lesson that lockouts are bad all around. Owners risk losing money and players risk losing goodwill. Football games dominate every fall and early winter Sunday, and both sides at the bargaining table have decided that it’s in their best interest to avoid long-term NFL hiatuses.
The National Hockey League is also no stranger to past lockouts. In 1992, the NHLPA called a strike on April 1st, just before the regular season ended and the playoffs began. League owners, not wanting to lose revenue, quickly came to an agreement. During the 1994-95 season, owners locked the players out and the stoppage lasted until mid-January. In 2004-05, another lockout lasted for the whole season and there was no Stanley Cup. In 2012, the owners locked hockey athletes out again, and there was another shortened season, similar to ‘94-95.
Hockey franchise owners, just like football team moguls, have come to understand since then that lockouts are bad for their bottom line. Players’ unions also want to keep their members working. When nobody’s playing games, nobody’s buying tickets, merchandise or concessions. It not only hits athletes and owners, it hurts the little people who depend on game day paychecks to earn a living, and it affects local economies. Vendors don’t sell their products to arenas and teams don’t get ad money.
The last NHL lockout made this painfully apparent. When the latest CBA was set to expire, in 2019, first the league owners and then the NHLPA announced that they wouldn’t reopen it. This kept hockey away from a lockout at least until the end of the 2021-22 season.
MLB owners should look at the history of other leagues’ lockouts. Locking out the players as a first step in negotiating makes athletes more determined to dig in their heels and pretty soon, nobody’s playing baseball. Club owners need to realize that an extended baseball stoppage is not a win for them but a loss for everybody involved.
-Jeff Dahlberg
Twitter: @JeffDahlberg3