I just came across a fascinating article from The Eagle-Tribune Online via Yanksfan vs Soxfan, which reveals that the Red Sox won't be making nearly as much money in merchandising or advertising from the Dice Clay deal as many of us (and I'm certainly a guilty party here) originally thought. The problem, it seems, is that the Sox only get exclusive rights to advertising and merchandising revenue when it's sold within the six New England states (with the exception of Fairfield County in Connecticut. If you were ever wondering about the official boundaries of Red Sox home turf versus Red Sox Nation, there you go). Everything else goes directly to MLB and gets split up according to the revenue sharing agreement.Ok, so shame on the Sox for not thinking about this problem beforehand and spending $110 million on a pitcher...except I can't buy the idea of the Red Sox organization, a group of savvy business people, not taking that issue into account in the first place and finding a way around it. It could be a goodwill thing, as the Sox claim, except that's not the sort of thing you'd hear from a senior vice president of sales and marketing - it's his job to find economic opportunities available in a big name like Dice Clay and exploit them for the benefit of the club, not give up because of an existing restriction. Where's the creativity in not finding a way around the problem? Personally, I think the first commenter on the page might be on point: the Red Sox are owned by several companies, including a media group that (full disclosure) I work for. Finding a way to hide revenue (in a legal way, of course) generated by Matsuzaka certainly doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility.
However, let's say that it's not possible to convert Dice Clay's presence in a Red Sox uniform into much more cold, hard cash than the Sox are generating now. We still got a pitcher who's got the potential to be much, much, much better than either king of this year's free agent pool and did so at - posting fee aside - a much cheaper price. Call me an apologist, but would you want to give up Dice Clay even if you knew the Sox wouldn't earn the posting fee back for a number of years? At this point, me either.
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