Fans have handed owners a weapon the union can’t ignore. As the MLBPA continues to resist the owners’ proposal ahead of the upcoming CBA negotiations, a fan survey has handed the league’s top executives another argument to strengthen their case.
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According to a survey by The Athletic, 68% of 14,154 respondents support introducing a hard salary cap. They also support a salary floor to improve competitive balance. With MLB proposing a $245.3 million cap and a $171.2 million floor for the 2027 season, the numbers could bolster their push for a system the MLBPA remains firmly opposed to. Now, with fan sentiment in the conversation, the fight over baseball’s financial structure is turning into a bigger battle over who truly speaks for the game.
“MLB owners do not intend to pivot from their insistence on a salary cap and floor no matter who wins the World Series,” Baseball Is Dead quoted Jess Passan.
“Owners do not intend to pivot from their contentions. Their insistence on a cap and floor — backed, the league says, by surveys that show fans want one — remains firm no matter who wins the Fall Classic,” Passan added.
MLB fans’ support for a salary cap has steadily increased over the years.
For reference, The Athletic ran the same survey in 2022 when 59% of respondents favored a salary cap. The increase in fan support by 9% in the last 4 years was mainly due to the unreal dominance of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
By flexing unprecedented financial muscle to secure consecutive titles, the Dodgers effectively broke the perception of competitive balance in baseball. They turned a long-debated labor issue into a massive public mandate.
To put this in perspective, the Dodgers are paying $180.8 million in luxury tax payments in 2026. This is higher than the combined total of the other three surviving teams in the ongoing postseason.
The combined payrolls of the Milwaukee Brewers ($143.7M), Tampa Bay Rays ($98.5M), and Cleveland Guardians ($74.4M) total almost $25M less than the Dodgers’ $340.6M. This spending gap allowed the Dodgers to assemble a roster no small-market team could match.
The Brewers leading the NLCS 2-0 puts forward an argument about how pay disparity doesn’t work on the field. However, the sample is still too small to compare against the Dodgers’ dominance in the last two years.
Yet even the Brewers’ early NLCS success hasn’t stopped the competitive-balance debate; owners see the fan survey as their strongest argument yet.
Small-market teams, lacking deep pockets, can’t compete with the Dodgers without a salary cap. The only option is capping the Dodgers’ upper limit while restricting the small-market team owners from spending too little.
“There are also a lot of fans who think their owners should sell their teams.” MLBPA interim executive director Bruce Meyer said.
“We’re very cognizant of the fans, and actually think a salary-cap system is worse for fans. Because it basically prevents teams that want to make their team better from doing so. It basically is an ultimate restriction on competition and the ability of teams to do what they think is best to build the best team for the fans.”
CBA negotiations are still far from being resolved, leaving the 2027 season’s future hanging in the balance. The owners now have a public mandate to push harder in negotiations. The next two months will decide if the fans’ expectations influence MLB’s future course of action.
