It had been awhile since I've taken an economics class so I'm not sure what the current dollar to butt-load conversion rate is, but $3,800,000,000 has to be equal to at least one (1) butt-load.

$3.8 million. That's what Forbes has recently listed the Chicago Cubs as being worth. That ranks them as the 4th most valuable Major League Baseball organization. The only trail the Boston Red Sox ($3.9 billion,) LA Dodgers ($4.075 billion,) and the Yankees ($6(!) billion) in estimated value.

The Cubs value GREW 13% from last year and profited $68 million as an organization in 2021.

It's the $68 million in operating income that has many Cub fans scratching their heads saying "Wait, I thought the team was hemorrhaging money."

That's probably because of Tom Ricketts' infamous "biblical losses" quote he game Jesse Rodgers on ESPN during MLB's (and the world's) pandemic shut down in 2020.

Ricketts was asked if teams, worth billions collectively, should simply take out loans or find other ways to pay the costs of playing in 2020, even if it's without fans. The scale of losses across the leage is biblical...In the long run, we may be able to sell equity to cover some of our losses but that's in the long run... Who would invest at the moment?

It's a quote that I'm sure Ricketts would want back. He was probably being a bit hyperbolic with the term biblical but I'm also sure he saw this as the perfect time to convey the image that the owners weren't making any money to lower the expectations of spending money on the roster.

The line "who would invest at the moment" also cracks me up. Anyone with a functioning brain knew that baseball would return someday (even though the owners tried to stop that with a lockout as well) and teams would be back to making money just like they did in 2018.

As for the White Sox, they're doing pretty good themselves. They find themselves ranked right in the middle of the league with a value estimated at $1.76 billion. Jerry Reinsdorf's South Siders operated at a loss of $10 million last year and saw only a 4% increase in value since 2021.

Just remember these numbers the next time an ownership group says they can't afford a player or increase ticket prices to games. There's a difference between losing money, making money, and making as much money as you possibly can. These guys rarely lose money and actually consider it a loss if they're not making as much as they possibly can. It's a business and they've "earned" the right to run them however they want. It's just up to the fans to figure out how much they want to support them.

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