VOL. 37, NO. 44
OCTOBER 31 - NOVEMBER 6, 2016
Business of Life
Source Lunch Blake Squires discusses tech, entrepreneurship and more. Page 20
Everarbor adds to its offerings with outdoor apparel. Page 19
The List
CLEVELAND BUSINESS
NEO’s largest parochial schools. Page 23
MLB playoff pool
SPORTS BUSINESS
Fall Classic is most coveted piece of MLB postseason pie
Here’s how Major League Baseball distributes the players’ portion of the gate revenue from the postseason: World
World Series winner:
36%
24% League Championship Series losers (two):
24%
Wild-Card losers (two):
3%
World Series loser:
Division Series losers (four):
13%
The Cleveland Indians take in the national anthem before Game 1 of the World Series against the Chicago Cubs at Progressive Field on Oct. 25. (Ken Blaze for Crain’s)
By KEVIN KLEPS kkleps@crain.com @KevinKleps
A trip to the World Series provides all sorts of financial benefits to a Major League Baseball team. Attendance spikes during the season, and it often rises 10% or more the following year. Sponsorships and merchandise sales increase,
and the added attention can lift up other areas of the business. But gate revenue — still one of the lifebloods of an MLB team — isn’t the cash cow that the inflated postseason ticket prices indicate that it would be for a club such as the Cleveland Indians. The Tribe was so good in the first two rounds of the playoffs — winning seven of eight games — that the organization didn’t get to the SEE INDIANS, PAGE 21
EMPLOYMENT
How all postseason gate revenues are divided
2015 playoff pool:
JJTaxes
JJTotal pool was a
JJThe
are taken off the top.
umpires’ assessment ranges from 5% (Wild-Card round) to 10%.
JJPlayers
get 50% of the gate for the Wild-Card games.
JJPlayers
get 60% for the first three games of the Division Series, the first four games of the LCS and the first four games of the World Series.
JJCommissioner’s J
office gets 15% of the World Series proceeds.
Participating clubs split the remaining gate receipts for each round.
record $69,882,149.26 JJChampion
Kansas City Royals received $25.6 million JJRunners-up N.Y.
Mets got $16.8M
ENERGY
Sterigenics is shifting HQ FirstEnergy must cut costs to Michael Petras’ home turf to avoid credit downgrade By JAY MILLER jmiller@crain.com @millerjh
Turnabout is fairly play. In 2015, ChanRx Corp. left Cleveland for San Diego. A new investor was already in San Diego trying out the nickname “Silicon Beach,” and its choice for CEO lived there, too. It made sense. Now, it looks like Northeast Ohio is gaining a business in much the same way. Sterigenics, a contract sterilization firm, is
moving to Broadview Heights. The firm has 2,600 employees spread across 49 operations in 13 countries on four continents, and a small headquarters staff in Oak Brook, Ill., a Chicago suburb. Its CEO, hired in June, is Michael Petras, a native of Northeast Ohio who has spent his career in this region, most recently as president of Cardinal Health Inc.’s Post-Acute Solutions businesses in Twinsburg. Moving a company headquarters is no longer a big deal — maybe not cheap, but not disruptive to the business. SEE PETRAS, PAGE 22
Entire contents © 2016 by Crain Communications Inc.
By DAN SHINGLER dshingler@crain.com @DanShingler
Chuck Jones needs to find about $200 million. That’s roughly the amount that Jones, CEO of Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp., says he needs to find in cost savings to preserve his company’s credit rating — and ultimately to stay independent. It will mean cuts to FirstEnergy’s expenses. That includes payroll, though not necessarily
with layoffs, as well as the closing of some unprofitable plants and other cost-saving measures. The goal is to keep FirstEnergy from being purchased by a competitor, Jones said. “But there’s blood in the water,” because of FirstEnergy’s weakened state, he warned in an interview last week with Crain’s Cleveland Business. It’s not just FirstEnergy’s future at stake. The company employs more than 1,300 people in Akron, and its corporate payroll is more than SEE COSTS, PAGE 8