Lockout Looms For 2027 Season If MLB, Union Can’t Come To Terms

No matter how much anyone tries to diminish it, the word “lockout” is going to hang over the 2026 Major League Baseball season like a plump slider about to be deposited into the far reaches of your favorite neighborhood ballpark.

Tony Clark, executive director of the MLB Players Association, has sounded like a broken record this year each time he’s addressed the media: Let’s not try to fix what isn’t broken. During spring training, at the All-Star Game, the World Series and this past week after player meetings in Scottsdale, Ariz., with selected members of the press.

An unedited audio file of that conversation was provided to Forbes by the union.

“As an organization you get ready for the next negotiations as soon as the ink is dried on the previous one,” Clark said. “I can’t speak for the other side, but our interests are getting into the room and hammering out a fair and equitable deal. That’s our commitment. The other stuff is just noise.”

The current Basic Agreement is set to expire on Dec. 1, 2026. Negotiations typically begin during spring training and will be the last for commissioner Rob Manfred, who says he will retire when his current contract expires on Jan. 25, 2029.

The union is anticipating tough sessions and is preparing for at least an offseason lockout, a redux of what happened before the current contract was signed during the spring of 2022. While that season was delayed, games were not missed.

There have been no negotiations thus far, either front or back channel, Clark said.

“The lines of communication are open. And any time those happen our players know about it.”

Earlier this year, Manfred rattled the sword about another lockout, although lately he’s been silent on the issue, refusing to address it during the World Series. Clark spoke out during last spring training saying, “Unless I am mistaken, the league has said there’s going to be a work stoppage. So, I don’t think I’m speaking out of school in that regard.”

He didn’t mention the possible lockout in his 35-minute talk last week.

“We never go into negotiations trying to miss games,” Clark said. “I can’t speak for the other side. But in our history we’ve missed games. We go in trying to move the industry forward. But we’re going to be prepared for what the other side is telling us they’re doing.”

The owners have talked about a salary cap and floor as exists in all the other organized pro sports to allegedly promote competitive balance. But the union is dead set against that. They will point out there are penalties in the current contract, involving the luxury tax threshold, many of them not enforced.

Lesser earning teams are supposed to invest their revenue-sharing dollars – with some exclusions – into player payrolls. Some do and others use it to offset losses.

Clark said this has been a hot topic of discussion with the players. Every team has the wherewithal to compete, he said.

“Knowing there are some teams that can compete, but have chosen not to, how does that affect the industry?” he asked.

The owners need to introduce some sort of creative concept proving the cap/floor system is better for the financial health of all the players, rather than a chosen few. They have to resolve their own differences on how to evenly share local television and streaming dollars before negotiations with the union even begin.

Since it takes a 75% vote of the 30 owners to approve anything, an even split of regional TV dollars seems unrealistic. The big-market teams that have their own networks or large contracts are enough in number to block it. The New York Yankees, New York Mets, Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Baltimore Orioles, Washington Nationals, San Francisco Giants, and even the Oakland/Sacramento/Las Vegas A’s head that list.

If the owners go into the negotiations attempting again to jam a cap/floor down the union’s throat, there will certainly be a lockout and perhaps a long one that could this time extend into the 2027 season. That would cost both sides games for the first time since the last player strike at the end of 1994 season cancelled 948 games, the playoffs and World Series.

At that point, the owners will lose revenue, and the players will not be paid. They’re paid from the first game of the regular season to the last and no time outside of that period. It will be a matter of which side blinks first; historically it’s the owners.

“We don’t go into the conversation looking to damage the game,” Clark said. “Particularly in a world where the game is moving in a very good direction. We should be celebrating our guys and the game and what we’re seeing. Our guys are doing that night in and night out.”

MLB is making plenty of money. The league set a record this past season by generating team sponsorship revenue of $2.05 billion. The two-time defending World Series-winning Dodgers drew more than 4 million at 50,000-seat Dodger Stadium for the first time and broke the $1 billion mark in local revenue. They are exhibit No. 1.

How long does anyone think Mark Walter and Guggenheim Baseball are going to want to give up any part of that? Include them in the Forbes list of Top 10 valued MLB teams that all should be against an in-season lockout. Again, it takes only 25% of the owners to balk at anything. Will these teams vote in their best interest or the interest of the other owners?

From the union’s point of view, with investment of licensing dollars that have been retained over the past five years rather than dispersed to the players, the MLBPA is in the strongest financal position it’s ever been for players to withstand a lockout that cancels games.

“The dollar amounts are higher than they’ve ever been, and the organization has been preparing to put the players into a position of flexibility to do whatever they want,” Clark said.

So, the clock is ticking. And the lockout is pending.

“The noise is suggesting that the sky is falling,” Clark concluded. “We’ll see once we start formal bargaining, but our players are ready for whatever that’s going to look like.”