FrontRowSportsReport.com: Sports Blog

The New York Yankees payroll for the 2007 baseball season topped out at $218.3 million – a record and the highest in the league by far. The payroll record is nothing new to the Yankees as they have had the highest payroll in baseball the past 9 years. However, the Yankees also had the highest revenue of any teams - $415 million; $100 million of it had to go back to the league in the revenue-sharing plan. Hmmm that doesn’t sound like good business to me, but hey what do I know.

Following the Yankees record payroll was the World Series champions Boston Red Sox with a distant $155.4 million, the Los Angeles Dodgers with $125.6 million and the New York Mets with $120.9 million. On the flip side the 3 lowest payrolls - and no bigger shockers here - were the Tampa Bay Devil Rays with $33.1 million, the Washington Nationals with $43.3 million and the Pittsburgh Pirates with $54.4 million. All told the entire MLB payroll for 2007 was $2.71 billion – up from $2.49 billion a year before. More importantly revenue topped out at $6.07 billion – up from $5.2 billion in 2006…that is a lot of overpriced beer and hot dogs.

So what does $218.3 million buy you - 94-68 record and 2nd place in the American League East. But I guess when you can clear $100 million your are getting a good return on investment.