In baseball, going halfsies is a really controversial idea.

A formal revenue split between players and owners is a key feature of a salary-cap system, which Major League Baseball’s owners want to introduce.

“Our salary cap and floor proposal levels the playing field while sharing baseball revenue with the players 50-50, which means players and clubs would share equally as revenue grows,” said Glen Caplin, an MLB spokesperson, in a statement to The Athletic.

The players’ union has a long list of reasons it’s opposed to MLB’s cap setup. Among them: Players already receive “well over” half the industry’s annual $12 billion haul. But the union also thinks the league is wrong to paint its proposal as even-steven.

“It’s no surprise that MLB would resort to deception in framing their salary cap proposals as ‘sharing equally,’” Bruce Meyer, the interim head of the Players Association, said in his own statement. “MLB hasn’t proposed a 50-50 ‘split’ of revenues. Any suggestion otherwise is misleading propaganda.”

When it comes to the revenue divide in a cap system, there’s crucial information to understand beyond just the percentage — namely, the denominator. What would be included, and what would be taken off the top, from the pot of money the sides would share?

The answer is laid out in a lengthy proposal MLB made on May 28, which was reviewed by The Athletic and includes a calculation MLB is dubbing just “baseball revenue,” or BR.

It has no shortage of deductions.

MLB could take up to 17 percent of local revenues off the top annually as expenses, plus up to 22 percent of national revenues. Plus, some areas would have no expense cap, such as construction and renovation costs for ballparks, including spring-training facilities.

The league-run TV station MLB Network would have no deduction limit, and for 2027 and 2028, neither would costs from any team’s local broadcasts.

The league also wants unlimited deductions for what it broadly termed “new ventures.”

“MLB’s so-called revenue ‘split’ is calculated only after skimming billions off the top in supposed expenses and exclusions,” Meyer continued in his statement. “There is also no ‘sharing equally’ in franchise value growth, expansion fees, or the vast amounts of revenues being generated around ballparks across the league.”

While it might come as a surprise, the revenue split is probably the most important piece of a cap system — even more so than the upper and lower limits on salary each team would have to respect. The split is the real salary cap.

That’s because after each season, player salaries would be adjusted to make sure players and owners alike get their designated percentage of revenue. For this reason, the league wants players to put up to 10 percent of their salaries into escrow each year.

These accounting gymnastics may sound familiar to those who follow other sports.

In the National Basketball Association, the pool of money that’s doled out is known as basketball-related income, or BRI. In the National Hockey League, the tabulation is called hockey-related revenue, or HRR.

“The proposed definition of baseball revenue aligns closely with the proven approaches used in other leagues,” Caplin said. “MLB player compensation has grown more slowly than player compensation in the other leagues.”

All the other leagues indeed permit deductions, but the NFL has notably fewer compared to the NBA and NHL, and to MLB’s desired setup.

None of the other cap leagues share the proceeds of franchise sales with players, either. Despite this, the revenue split in the NHL is still regularly discussed as “50-50.”

But overall, the baseball union portrays MLB’s proposal as a Frankenstein assembled from the least generous pieces of other leagues.

Most any dollar that teams spend on players would count against the players’ share of BR. That includes everything from amateur-signing bonuses, retirement benefits and moving expenses, to interpreters and clubhouse meals.

“The cap system they proposed is not just bad for all the reasons that we believe caps systems are always bad,” Meyer said in June. “They’ve effectively managed to cobble together the worst system for players in any of the major sports, and (it’s) not even close.”

Under a cap, another key matter would have to be negotiated: how often the union could ask for a financial audit of the league office and the 30 teams.

The league proposed 10 audits, which would be fewer than are available in other cap systems. The NBA union is permitted an average of 15 per year, while the unions in the NFL and NHL have no limit.

Caplin said that MLB is providing “comparable independent audit rights and protections as the other unions.”

Baking the pie

In cap systems, changes to the pot can make a big difference, even if the percentage split is unaltered.

During the NBA’s last round of bargaining in 2023, basketball players agreed to the introduction of “the second apron,” a spending threshold with penalties so significant for teams that cross it that it has dampened some players’ markets in free agency.

The union now would like to change that provision. But one of the tradeoffs for agreeing to it in the first place was a newly shared revenue stream.

Before 2023, believe it or not, basketball players did not have a cut of licensed merchandise unless the item had a player’s name or image on it. A cap with a New York Knicks logo, for example, didn’t count toward the players’ share. Once it did, the pie grew by about $160 million.

In MLB, the league wants to put revenue from traditional buckets into the pie: things like ticket sales, merchandise, broadcasts and beer. (And, yes, hats.)

Suite sales for gamedays and seat licenses would count, as would 80 percent of naming rights for a stadium. Gameday parking in a half-mile radius is included too.

But players would be largely walled off from ancillary businesses teams operate — moneymakers that players will always want a slice of, and owners will always try to shield.

Under MLB’s proposal, land sales and leases around stadiums would not be divided with players.

The league also formally addresses what it calls “ballpark districts,” mixed-use developments around stadiums that some owners have built. A bit of the revenue from these would be shared by the players — but not much.

The league proposal counts eight teams as having a bona fide district: the Atlanta Braves, Chicago Cubs, Colorado Rockies, Pittsburgh Pirates, San Francisco Giants, Seattle Mariners, St. Louis Cardinals and Texas Rangers.

The Atlanta Braves’ Battery district would be subject to the revenue split, to an extent. (Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)

As a publicly traded organization that has to regularly release financial information, the Braves reported that their district brought in $97 million in 2025.

What would be shared from these areas? During an MLB event, teams would fully share parking fees within the district. Plus, 20 percent of the revenue from signage within a ballpark district and its parking areas would go into the pot.

If some restaurants and bars open only seasonally in a ballpark district, their revenues would count too — but only on game days. That means owners would not share a cut from restaurants that operate year-round. (MLB declined to specify how many district eateries currently operate part-time.)

MLB and the teams would share some income related to sports gambling. But, unsurprisingly, the new casino that New York Mets owner Steve Cohen plans to build near his team’s ballpark would not directly benefit players.

Earnings from brick-and-mortar casinos and sportsbooks would only count if the casino’s business is “predominantly derived from gambling on MLB.” (MLB declined to say whether any such casino exists.)

Some of the stipulations in MLB’s proposal are almost amusingly in the weeds.

Paid mascot appearances do count toward the pool. And while MLB does not want to share access fees for film shoots at a ballpark, it is offering to share ATM fees.

For billboards and signs the team sells outside of a stadium, MLB offered to put 80 percent of revenues into BR, rather than a full 100. To qualify, such ads would need to be within a half-mile radius “as measured from home plate.”

A tricky calculation

If baseball winds up with a cap and a predetermined revenue divide, the conversation about BR would never end. Both the league and the union would need full-time staff in place to monitor BR and handle disputes over it.

In other leagues, the percentage split has sometimes led to work stoppages. But the worst disagreements aside, BR would be a major topic every time a new collective bargaining agreement is negotiated.

Baseball’s current negotiation is still in its early stages, which means neither side has made its best offer. Down the line, MLB presumably would be willing to offer players a better version.

“We stand ready to bargain on this issue at the table,” Caplin said of the revenue plan.

It seems unlikely, however, that the union will send a direct counter-proposal for the calculation of BR. Players do not want a cap at all, and are therefore loath to negotiate any of its particular workings.

That’s too bad, according to MLB, which suggests players are losing out in the current system because their earnings are not formally tied to revenues.

“Unlike in other sports, major-league player compensation has not kept up with revenue growth,” Caplin said. “Since 2003, while MLB revenue has grown 247 percent, player payroll has grown at 149 percent.”

Meyer does not believe MLB is actually trying to help players, however.

“The league’s proposal is to slash overall player compensation from where it stands now by hundreds of millions, lock it in, and guarantee it can never grow more than revenues again,” Meyer said. “If players had agreed to a deal like the one that has been proposed at any time in the past two decades, their losses would be in the billions.”

And, in an unsurprising development, the league and the union also again disagree on the accounting.

Meyer said that Caplin appears to be using an “entirely different definition of revenue” than the league did in its proposal for BR. And besides that, Meyer said, the league’s timeframe is cherry-picked.

“As usual, the league’s calculation is misleading,” Meyer said. “It stretches back to 2003 for a reason, because an examination of more recent trends in revenue and overall player compensation would show the two have closely tracked one another. In fact, since 2022, growth in overall player compensation has exceeded revenue growth.”

In baseball and everywhere else, when billions of dollars are on the line, the things that sound simple usually aren’t.