Stories Shaping Sports and Business: May 14th

Sunshine State Welcomes All Sports

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis invited NFL, NBA, MLB and other major league sports teams and players to come to the Sunshine State.

During a news conference, DeSantis sent out a message to all league commissioners: "What I would tell commissioners of leagues is, if you have a team in an area where they just won't let them operate, we'll find a place for you here in the state of Florida.”

This announcement comes about a day after Arizona Governor Doug Ducey said Arizona would be open for business for all sports starting this Saturday, May 16th, as long as they are played without fans in stadiums.

There have been a few sporting events in Florida since the coronavirus outbreak, including WWE's WrestleMania and UFC 249.

Florida has nine professional teams, including three from the NFL.

MLB Owners and Players Fighting Over Salary

Major League Baseball is tossing around the idea of playing half a season, which some believe would mean a cut in salary for the players and a reported 50-50 split of revenue between players and owners. But according to Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Blake Snell, that’s not happening.

Snell was streaming on this Twitch channel when he started ranting about his contract. The AL CY Young winner told his audience: 

"I gotta get my money. I'm not playing unless I get mine, OK? And that's just the way it is for me. Like, I'm sorry you guys think differently, but the risk is way the hell higher and the amount of money I'm making is way lower. Why would I think about doing that?”

The 50-50 revenue split was approved by the MLB owners but is now waiting for approval from the MLB Players Association.

This back and forth about salaries is really just the beginning as all professional team owners and athletes are in unprecedented times and there’s no real language in their Collective Bargaining Agreement that accounts for work stoppage do to a global pandemic.

Daily Coronavirus Update

There are nearly 4.4 million cases of the virus worldwide, with nearly 300,000 deaths. 1.3 million of those cases are in the U.S., and the U.S. has nearly 85,000 fatalities. Russia has 252,000 cases and the United Kingdom has over 234,000 cases, with over 33,000 deaths. 

Today, we got data on how many Americans filed for unemployment in the past week. The figure came in at 2.98 million Americans, which was more than what economists anticiapted. Continuing jobless claims were 22.8 million, still the highest on record. Over the past eight weeks, 36.5 million Americans have filed for unemployment.

TheStreet's Katherine Ross Contributed to this report.