🏆 How the Dodgers Lost $200M By Winning the World Series

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Last week, we discussed how friend-of-the-newsletter Kurt Benkert designed the perfect backyard football. 

Well, as it turns out, it got people interested.

Kurt just shared his sales figures with me a week after I posted that story in my newsletter and on social media, and I genuinely couldn’t believe the numbers.

I’ll share those at the end.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: How the Dodgers Lost $200M By Winning the World Series

📉 Biggest Loser: The Solution to NFL Concussions: Banning Helmets

🏆 Winner’s Circle: Why $70 for Parking is the Best Deal in Sports

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🗞 The Big Story

The Los Angeles Dodgers just lost hundreds of millions of dollars by winning the World Series.

Let’s break it down.

Playoff Pool: Every team that makes the MLB Playoffs is paid a percentage of a pool of money generated based on how far they advance.

This pool is comprised of 60% of the gate receipts from each playoff series, which means a Yankees-Dodgers World Series was the best-case scenario for every other playoff team since it has commanded some of the highest average ticket prices in MLB history.

Last year, this total pool of money was worth a record $107.8 million, with the World Series-winning Texas Rangers receiving 36% of it.

• World Series Champion: 36%

• World Series Runner-Up: 24%

• ALCS Loser: 12%

• NLCS Loser: 12%

• 4x Division Series Losers: 3.25% each

• 4x Wild Card Losers: 0.75% each

Bonus Money: Each team then decides how to split its winnings. For example, last year, the Rangers voted to distribute 64 “full shares” to each player worth $506,000 plus 12 more “partial shares” worth $48,000 based on individual performances.

And while an extra $500,000 might not seem like a lot for guys like Ohtani or Judge, the MLB minimum salary was just $740,000 this year - meaning a World Series payout could almost double some players’ salaries.

Missed Revenue: However, the most interesting wrinkle of this entire system is that the total pool of money is only determined by the ticket revenue generated from the minimum number of games in each series.

This means that regardless of if the Dodgers had swept the Yankees in four games or the series had gone all seven, the total pool of money remains the same.

But the kicker is that 100% of the revenue generated in Games 5 through 7 goes to the teams hosting those games.

And at an average ticket price of $1700 in Los Angeles, winning in five means the Dodgers missed out on two games that would have netted them close to $100M each in ticket revenue alone.

📉 Biggest Loser

The NFL could solve its biggest problem by getting rid of helmets… let me explain.

Background: Even though the NFL has taken steps to reduce the number of head injuries through things like Guardian Caps and new kick-off rules - concussions have still been on the rise in the past few years.

In fact, some critics have pointed out that the NFL is actually increasing the risk of concussions by constantly bragging about new helmet technology that’s supposed to make its players even safer.

However, what it actually does is makes players feel invincible, which makes them more likely to use their heads in a collision.

Solution: However, the truth is that the best way to protect players from concussions is to encourage them to hit with other parts of their bodies.

It’s why the NFL has started fining offensive and defensive players hundreds of thousands of dollars per week for “lowering their heads,” but what if the league took things a step further?

Well, that’s what the A7FL decided to do with its full-contact football league by removing pads completely.

But this idea isn’t as ridiculous as you might think.

The A7FL CEO told me that his league is safer than the NFL because of an idea called “risk homeostasis,” which means that athletes will instinctively take their heads out of a tackle when they don’t have helmets on to protect themselves.

Verdict: This results in better form tackles and lower levels of impact, which, according to one study the A7FL participated in, have the potential to reduce the effects of long-term brain damage.

To date, the league has raised $800,000 from 800 crowd-sourced investors and hopes to raise another $5M in the next year—maybe the NFL should start taking notice.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

It costs $70 to park at the Clippers’ new Intuit Dome, but it’s actually one of the best deals in all of sports.

Background: Last week, my friend Michael made a video explaining that given the value of the land around Intuit Dome, the Clippers are actually losing money by charging just $70 per car.

@esquiresports

Why do we priortize subsiziding private car ownership over anything else? #NBA #losangeles #clippers #parking #landuse #urbanism #publict... See more

As he points out, the Clippers only offer 4,000 parking spots—which doesn't seem like enough for a stadium with a capacity of 18,000.

But that’s on purpose.

Because the Clippers don’t actually want you to drive to their games, and it’s why they’ve set up a program that I think every pro sports team should start offering.

The Plan: In August, the team announced that it would set up five different pick-up locations around Los Angeles. Here, fans with a ticket to a game (or any other event at Intuit Dome) can ride a free bus directly to the arena.

Not only is the bus free, but parking is also free at most of these park-and-ride locations, or fans can opt to take public transit to the pick-up locations instead.

These buses will pick fans up as far as 30 minutes from the stadium and drop them off again at the end of the night.

And honestly, I’d love to see every pro sports team do this because not only would it help reduce traffic but fans wouldn’t be forced to pay ridiculous prices just to get to the stadium.

⏱ In Other News

• What Happened to the #1 QB in America?

• Over half of the WNBA doesn’t have a coach. Here’s why.

• This mouthguard could help one of the biggest problems in sports.

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👋 Happy Friday!

For reference, in the first 45 days after launching The Dime Lab Football, Kurt sold out 500 units at $60 a piece for an estimated revenue of $30,000.

Not bad.

But just one week after posting the video to TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts, Kurt said his store did $30,000 in sales in seven days.

Adding that to my list of case studies (and no, he did not pay me for any of this).