Midmarket and small market teams cannot compete for players with big market teams according to David Rubenstein.
Orioles owner David Rubenstein
The CEO and principal owner of Major League Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles franchise, David Rubenstein, apparently didn’t get the memo from MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred. Loose lips sink ships. Rubenstein, who in 1987 was the Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private investment firms, said Major League Baseball needs a salary cap. Rubenstein and many of his fellow MLB owners probably feel that way but MLB doesn’t want the owners to show their hand in the upcoming negotiations with the Players Association in the collective bargaining talks. “I wish it would be the case that we would have a salary cap in baseball the way other sports do, and maybe eventually we will, but we don’t have that now,” Rubenstein told Yahoo Finance during the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland. “I suspect we’ll probably have something closer to what the NFL and the NBA have, but there’s no guarantee of that.” Rubenstein’s business is in a midsize market but he doesn’t feel he can compete with the Los Angeles Dodgers business for players.
Rubenstein went on. “I think the big city teams have some advantages. Now, in Los Angeles, they have another advantage. They have Japanese players, number of them that they got like Shohei and people in Japan really love watching the Dodgers, and they sell a lot of merchandise in Japan for Dodgers players,” Rubenstein and his group purchased the Baltimore Orioles franchise in 2024. Rubenstein needs to get used to being part of a silent group, Major League Baseball owners, and probably got a talk on how to behave and use proper etiquette during the lead up to the collective bargaining negotiations. Of course, a guy like Rubenstein is used to getting his own way in business. MLB owners and players have two years left on their deal.
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