The Los Angeles Dodgers have finally signed their gigantic TV contract, landing a deal with Time Warner that would yield the Dodgers between $7 billion and $8 billion over the next 20 years.
A chunk of that money will head back to MLB in the form of revenue sharing -- the haggling with MLB on just how much hasn't yet been completed -- but even after MLB and the Dodgers agree on just how much of that revenue will be subject to the 34 percent cut that heads to the revenue-sharing pot, that's a lot of green raining in Chavez Ravine. On the trajectory that they're on, the Dodgers will need quite a bit of it.
For the 2013 season, depending on how you count things, they currently have between $210 million and $220 million committed to players on the roster. That figure doesn't include the 2013 bills the team owes to Hyun-Jin Ryu ($3.3 million), Yasiel Puig ($3.7 million), Andruw Jones ($3.2 million), Tony Gwynn Jr. ($1 million) and an additional million from various contract buyouts. Throw in an extra $20 million or so for luxury tax and a half-million or so for each of the pre-arbitration players who play the year on the roster, and we're talking one-quarter of a billion dollars in payroll this upcoming season.
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