Sports

Baseball’s lockout threatens to dampen Atlanta Braves’ celebratory offseason

December 7th, 2021

One month after the Braves won the World Series, Major League Baseball owners locked out players as the league’s collective bargaining agreement expired.

Emil Moffatt/WABE News

In early November, the Atlanta Braves ended a 26-year World Series championship drought when they defeated the Houston Astros in six games.

But just a month later, Major League Baseball owners locked out the players as a quarter-century of peace on the labor front came to an end. It’s the first work stoppage since the World Series was canceled in 1994.

Emory University sports marketing professor Mike Lewis joined WABE’s “All Things Considered” to discuss how the lockout could affect the Braves’ offseason.

On whether the work stoppage might affect Braves’ ticket sales for 2022:

“I have to think that the Braves’ fans are so overjoyed by this World Series, that they are very interested in committing to season tickets,” said Lewis. “But anything that disrupts that or makes anything less certain, ‘is there going to be an Opening Day?’ after losing one for COVID [in 2020], it hurts the sports fan.”

On the potential for the Braves to re-sign free agent All-Star first baseman Freddie Freeman once the lockout ends:

“There are teams, the New York Yankees, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Chicago Cubs that have bigger revenue potential, they have bigger markets,” said Lewis. “And so for teams like Atlanta, it’s always going to be a little frightening whether the bigger markets are going to swoop in and put a deal out there they just can’t match.”