The “Ellsbury Effect” Part II

I decided to investigate my own curiosities stemming from my ideas last week about the “Ellsbury Effect.” I forwarded copies of my post to the Boston Globe’s Red Sox reporters as well as to CNBC’s Sports Business reporter. Although I still remember hearing that Matsuzaka’s bid posting number ($51 million paid to the Seibu Lions for rights to negotiate with the Japanese player) was calculated by Theo Epstein and Larry Lucchino as their figure for how much they expected to earn in Japanese marketing in Daisuke’s first year with the Sox, Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe seems to disagree. Darren Rovell of CNBC also doesn’t think that t-shirts sales really amount to much. I guess my assumptions about the details of ball clubs’ business models were slightly off. I hope these two reporters’ letters help better explain the Sox’s financial ties to Ellsbury. Many thanks to Peter Abraham and Darren Rovell for help clarifying the situation. You can find their emails below.

Greg:

The Sox get only 1/30th of the money on Dice-K as all international sales are divided up among the teams. As for Ellsbury, it's not enough impact financially to sway any decision whether to trade him or not. T-shirt sales are an insignificant portion of team revenues.

Thanks for the note,

Pete Abraham
Red Sox reporter
The Boston Globe

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BASEBALL TEAMS SPLIT MERCHANDISE REVENUES WITH EACH OTHER. SO ELLSBURY ISN'T WORTH ANYTHING MORE FOR HIS JERSEY SALES.

Darren Rovell (NBC Universal)

The “Ellsbury Effect” Part II