Dodgers lead golden era for MLB, they are not the Evil Empire
The Dodgers, with their way of building a roster, are not harming baseball, quite the opposite.
With an accumulated spending of more than two billion dollars on player contracts in the last 10 years – a key weapon in their constant participation in the postseason, five appearances in the World Series and three championships since 2020 -, the Los Angeles Dodgers are already widely considered the new “Evil Empire” of the Major Leagues, relieving the New York Yankees of the ominous title attributed to them two decades ago by their hated rivals, the Boston Red Sox.
In the 10 seasons between 2016 and 2025, the Dodgers advanced to the playoffs every year, fought for the championship on half of those occasions, and largely led the sales of tickets, advertising, and broadcast rights to the games, creating an image of a super team that, for obvious reasons, increased its base of support, but also of admonishment.
While rejection against the winner is something natural in sports, the irony, however, is that the thesis that “the Dodgers are ruining baseball” uses as its main fuel spending on players in a league without a salary cap and in which a significant group of clubs invest almost on par or very close to the level of Los Angeles.
The Dodgers “are ruining baseball” by having a $350 million payroll that won a second world championship (something that has not happened in MLB since the beginning of the third millennium and that a National League team has not achieved in more than half a century), but the New York Mets “are not ruining baseball” by paying $342 million (just $8 million less than the Dodgers) and not qualifying for the postseason of the old circuit.
Nor are the Yankees ruining baseball, who paid $308 million in players and extended their title drought to 16 years. Not the Philadelphia Phillies ($293 million), who lost to the Dodgers in the Division Series after starting as favorites, nor the $255 million Toronto Blue Jays, who were up 3-2 with two games remaining at home and wasted multiple chances to eliminate Los Angeles to win their first World Series since 1993.
Even less are the two clubs from the state of Texas (Houston Astros and Texas Rangers) that occupied places 6 ($232 million) and 7 ($226 M.) in spending on players in 2025 and did not go beyond the regular series, contrary to the two representatives of Ohio (Cleveland Guardians and Cincinnati Reds), who did participate in the October league with budgets that were around $100 million.
The reality is that the beef with the Dodgers is not what they invest, but the results of their aggressiveness, which is exactly the same reason the Yankees were labeled an “Evil Empire” by Boston executive Larry Lucchino in 2002, when New York was coming out of a stretch in which it was spending a lot of money and winning a lot of titles.
Now that the Yankees are only spending dollars, but not adding championships, they are basically no longer ruining baseball.
What’s the big picture for Major League Baseball spending, say over a sustained period?
In the last 10 years, including penalties for violating the Competitive Balance program (which punishes clubs with taxes for exceeding the annual payroll cap), the Dodgers have invested $2,373 million, followed by the Yankees ($2,226 million), the Red Sox ($2,205 million), the Mets ($2,085 million), the Chicago Cubs ($1,841 million), the Rangers ($1,832 M.), the Astros ($1,768 M.) and the Los Angeles Angels ($1,766 M.).
And right here we return with the tremendous irony of the apocalyptic discourse. The Dodgers are ruining baseball by spending 2 billion on players, advancing to the playoffs every year and winning three championships, but their neighbors Angels are not ruining baseball even though they have dedicated almost two billion on their players in the last decade, but their cost does not matter because they do not even qualify for the playoffs.
Clearly the problem isn’t the spending, but rather the bottom line of the top-spending team, even if it boosts the entire league in the process.
MLB lives golden era
Led by the Dodgers, who brought 4 million fans to their stadium for the first time in their history, last season the MLB had a global attendance of 71,409,421, the highest since 2017.
Television audiences and social media impressions were historic. The 2025 World Series, between the Dodgers and the Blue Jays, the only foreign team in the major leagues, was more watched than last year’s edition, which pitted the Dodgers and the Yankees, two of the most popular professional teams in the United States.
With their all-star staff led by Japanese Shohei Ohtani and including his compatriot Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Dodgers played a leading role in increasing the viewership of MLB games nationally, locally, on MLB.TV and in Japan compared to last year, with most platforms recording double-digit increases in their audience percentage.
FOX had its most-watched season since 2022, averaging 2.04 million viewers, representing a 9% increase. AM850’s Major League Sunday posted its best season in 12 years (2013), with an average audience of 1.8 million viewers, a 21% increase over the previous year’s total.
TBS achieved its largest audience in 14 years (2011), with an average of 462,000 viewers per game, which are not exclusive. This represents a 29% increase over the previous year.
NHK in Japan recorded its largest regular season audience, averaging 2.65 million viewers, up 20% from the previous season. This year marked the fifth consecutive season in which NHK has recorded an increase in viewership, since 2021.
On social networks, last season was the most viewed in history, with more than 17.8 billion views on all MLB and MLB Spanish social media accounts. This figure represents a 20% increase over the previous season’s total.
For the third year in a row, Ohtani was the player who sold the most jerseys in all of baseball, followed by Aaron Judge of the Yankees, and then two other members of the Dodgers, Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts. Pitcher Clayton Kershaw was ranked No. 12.
The seventh game of the World Series that concluded last weekend averaged 51 million viewers in the United States, Canada and Japan, making it the most-watched MLB game in 34 years, since Game 7 of the 1991 World Series. The average audience for the seven games was 34 million viewers in the United States, Canada and Japan, the largest audience for a World Series since 1992 and a 19% increase over the previous year, when the Dodgers met. and the Yankees, two of the most popular and successful teams in world sports.
With all these favorable numbers, it is very likely that MLB will exceed its 2024 gross revenue of $12.1 billion, the all-time record. Last year’s revenue increased by 4.3% compared to the previous year and registered a jump of 15.2% since 2012.
Not including the seasons affected by the coronavirus pandemic (2020 and 2021), Major League Baseball’s profits have continued to grow each year for more than the last decade, jumping from $9 billion in 2014 to $12.1 billion in 2024, an increase of 33%.
An economic study published by CNBC at the beginning of the 2025 season showed that the 30 MLB clubs had an average value of $2,620 million, a historical record.
That same report showed that the Yankees, worth $8 billion, are the most expensive team in baseball and among all North American sports franchises, they are only behind the Dallas Cowboys of American football, who are valued at $11 billion. According to the report, the Yankees generated $705 million in 2024.
The Dodgers, worth $5.8 billion and $701 million in revenue the previous year, came in second. Nine clubs exceeded $3 billion in value and all exceeded $1.2 billion.
The Tampa Bay Rays, who in April 2025 were valued at $1.4 billion, ended the year being sold to a new group of businessmen for $1.7 billion.
Those are not numbers from a sport that is being ruined, quite the opposite.
On the other hand, it is clear that MLB needs a system that prevents the Dodgers, Yankees and Mets from having payrolls of $300 million at the same time that five other teams (Miami Marlins, Athletics, Chicago White Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates and Rays) are under $100 million.
Perhaps, instead of criticizing those who do invest, the guns should start pointing towards those who do not.
