Baseball's Richest Team Is Once Again Crying Poor

Won't somebody please, please, feel sorry for the New York Yankees? The poor, widdle, downtrodden, humble New York Yankees? 

The New York Yankees play in the biggest city in the United States. They have had the most success of any franchise in Major League Baseball history, with 27 World Series titles, as their fans will frequently remind you. They have their own television network. Every season, they rank near the top in attendance. In 2025, they drew nearly 3.4 million fans, averaging roughly 42,000 per game, despite high ticket prices. Their luxury suites are in high demand thanks to New York's large, wealthy corporate base. They have advertising covering every inch of Yankee Stadium, assuredly at exorbitant cost.

They sell tons of merchandise, thanks to their immediately recognizable logo, classic pinstripe uniforms, and star players like Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Gerrit Cole. MLB is also thriving at a national level, with attendance and television ratings up, enhancing the Yankees' franchise value and national television revenue distributions.

Even though they didn't win a championship in 2024 or 2025, they hosted three home World Series games in 2024, then more home playoff games in 2025. And yet, somehow, despite all these factors, the New York Yankees are crying poor. Again.

NEW YORK - The New York Yankees  line up for the National Anthem as a tribute to former New York Yankee Brett Gardner's son, Miller, is seen on the video board on Opening Day at Yankee Stadium on March 27, 2025. (Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images)

New York Yankees Ownership Can't Help Themselves

This week, on a video conference call with baseball media, Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner said he would love it if New York's payroll would come down for the 2026 season. And laughably claimed that the Yankees, the literal Yankees, may not have made a profit this year.

"Would it be ideal if I went down [with the payroll]? Of course," he said during the call, per ESPN. "But does that mean that's going to happen? Of course not. We want to field a team we know could win a championship -- or we believe could win a championship."

He continued, saying that it's not "fair" or "accurate" to say that the team made a profit last year. Steinbrenner highlighted expenses, while disputing the estimates that the organization brought in over $705 million in revenue. 

"I don't want to get into it, but that's not a fair statement or an accurate statement," he added. "Everybody wants to talk about revenues. They need to talk about our expenses, including the $100 million expense to the city of New York that we have to pay every Feb. 1, including the COVID year. It all starts to add up in a hurry.

"Nobody spends more money, I don't believe, on player development, scouting, performance science. These all start to add up. If you want to go look at the revenues, you got to somehow try to figure out the expense side as well. You might be surprised."

There's plenty to break down here, but at a base level, there's an easy way for Steinbrenner to convince everyone that the Yankees lose money: show us your expenses. And not your expenses including the salary he assuredly pays himself, but the actual expenses spent on payroll, the city, player development, scouting, and the like. If you're losing money, show us. He would never do that, because it's obviously ridiculous and would disprove his point. If the Yankees aren't making a profit, nobody in baseball is. Yet franchise values have exploded, and the team's payroll has increased as revenues have increased. In 2015, the Yankees were worth an estimated $3.2 billion. In 2025, that estimate had risen to $8.2 billion. Weird for a corporation to see its franchise value grow $5 billion in 10 years if they're losing money.

Not to mention that last year, for example, their payroll wound up exceeding $300 million, with some estimates reaching as high as $320 million. Of course, baseball teams have plenty of expenses outside their payroll. But it's easy for Steinbrenner to make this claim without backing it up. For example, let's say he determines that he wants to pay himself a "salary" of $50 million per year. And that $50 million is the difference between spending every penny and turning a $50 million profit. Yet he could tell the media that the poor Yankees didn't make any money, when in reality the profit they made went to him. 

And that's fine! That's his right as the owner of the team. Steinbrenner also hasn't been "cheap," he's spent plenty of money on payroll, and the Yankees do have a large support staff. It's absurd though, to suggest that he's losing money when owning one of the biggest handful of brands in all of sports. If the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets are making profits with higher payrolls, and they are most assuredly making profits, the Yankees are too. Stop acting poor when you're not.