ABSTRACT
In 1994, the players of Major League Baseball in the US went on strike. This led to the cancellation of 938 games overall, including the entire post-season and the World Series. Team owners were demanding a salary cap and came up with a new revenue-sharing plan, which required the players’ approval. The players’ union rejected the offer, which they thought was unfair to the players and merely a way to address problems of disparity among the owners. After prolonged negotiations failed to break the impasse, the acting commissioner Bud Selig called off the rest of the season on September 14. The move to cancel the rest of the season meant the loss of $580 million in ownership revenue and $230 million in player salaries. Thus, the players essentially walked away from $230 million collectively – the average salary of players at this time was about $1.2 million per year – because of what they considered was an unfair offer. This in turn resulted in a loss of more than twice that amount for the owners.
