If You Share It...

Skip at The Sports Economist has this piece on the Devil Ray's financial picture.  In part, Skip says:

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays may have one of the worst records and lowest player payrolls in Major League Baseball, but their financial picture apparently is strong. ...

$20 million in revenue sharing - a socialistic subsidy for teams that choose not to compete - is responsible in part for the rosy financials of the D-Rays.  King George, you can be sure, is fuming.

And rightfully so.  Why should the D-Rays spend any of that shared revenue on players?  It's not generated by the D-Rays' players.  Moreover, the D-Rays' signing of a big-name free agent is not going to amount to a hill of beans in terms of shared revenue received by the D-Rays.  What matters to the D-Rays in signing a player is the D-Rays' fans willingness to pay for baseball, not the Yanks' fans' willingness to pay.

As the system is set up now, sharing revenue gives no incentive for poor teams to get better.  Somehow, if we have to have any kind of revenue sharing system (and I'm not saying that there should be one), the amount of revenue that gets received by the "small market" teams should be tied to their quality at the margin.  Otherwise, the owners have little to no incentive to spend shared cash on their team.