I'm not %100 sure but I think the players stance on payroll is a solitary thing for the younger guys and the guys in the minors that can't really afford a pay cut, the MLB players had made an offer to cover some of the proposed pay cut the guys in the minors were going to get.
A vast majority of what the MLB makes is from tv, the broadcast rights and all the adverts that get displayed during the game. Most ball parks seat about 45-47,000, and the average tickets price of a game is $69, that's about $3.1M per game. I'd be surprised if that covers the expense of just having a game. There's electric, water(lots of toilet flushes), all the paper towels they go through in the restrooms, insurance, employee uniforms- and not the players either, payroll for everyone working at the park excluding the actual team, it costs extra to have all the cops there for traffic control, and about 100 other things. All that shit adds up quick. Hockey is even worse, they get half the attendance with triple the electric bill
