Shohei Ohtani is joining the Los Angeles Dodgers in free agency.
What did it cost? Everything $700 million.
It needs to be said again. Seventy percent of a billion dollars, for one player, over the course of a decade. To say the deal shatters the MLB record for largest contract and largest average annual value is to understate the effect this deal could have. With one stroke of the pen, Ohtani will reset what we think is possible in sports economics.
The one caveat to all of this is the deal reportedly contains massive deferrals, which will lower the actual value of the deal to inflation. $700 million is a nice round number, but those are rarely real in contracts this big.
Here is a list of every way Ohtani's deal will bend what we know about the intersection of sports and money.
Ohtani's deal is the largest known contract in sports history
Baseball is well known for having the biggest deals, but that's only in North America.
The world of soccer had actually been seeing bigger money flow for years, and we know by how much thanks to the efforts a) Lionel Messi and b) Saudi Arabia. Messi's leaked $674 million contract with FC Barcelona was previously the largest known contract in all of sports. Until Ohtani brought that title back to baseball.
Ohtani's deal is worth more than his two highest-paid teammates combined, by a lot
Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman are the Dodgers' two biggest stars under contract (Clayton Kershaw is currently a free agent). Those two deals ($365 million for Betts and $162 million for Freeman) are worth a combined $527 million.
The Dodgers could sign another top free agent — say, Yoshinobu Yamamoto — to a $173 million deal and still have their second-, third- and fourth-largest contracts be worth as much as Ohtani.
There is not a single team where Ohtani could have signed that deal and not have it be larger than team's next two biggest contracts. The San Diego Padres would have come closest with Manny Machado ($350 million) and Fernando Tatis Jr. ($340 million).
Ohtani's deal costs about a third of what the Dodgers themselves cost
Back when the Guggenheim group bought the Dodgers from the McCourts, the $2 billion price tag inspired sticker shock across the sport.
Ohtani's deal is worth 35% of that value now.
Ohtani's salary is larger than seven current MLB payrolls
The Dodgers obviously exist on a different financial plane than most teams thanks to their large market, very large television deal and the largest stadium in MLB by seating capacity, but Ohtani's deal underscores how big the gap is.
A $70 million average annual value puts Ohtani ahead of the current projected 26-man payrolls of the Cincinnati Reds ($67.5 million), Kansas City Royals ($67.2 million), Pittsburgh Pirates ($49.2 million) and Oakland Athletics ($33.9 million), per Cot's Contracts.
It should be said those teams actually receive plenty of money just by virtue of league payments and revenue sharing. They could also very well up those numbers over the course of the rest of the offseason.
Ohtani's deal is nearly worth more than the previous largest MLB, NFL and NBA free agent deals combined
Most of the largest deals ever signed in the world of sports are usually contract extensions, like in the case of the previous largest MLB contract (Mike Trout), NFL contract (Patrick Mahomes) and NBA contract (Jaylen Brown).
If you specify on just the largest free agent deals, though, things get pretty hilarious. The previous largest MLB deal signed on the open market was Aaron Judge's $360 million pact to return to the Yankees. The NFL equivalent is Lamar Jackson at $260 million, while the NBA is Kevin Durant at $194 million.
Add those together and it's $814 million. Ohtani matched 86% of that with one deal.
Ohtani's deal will cost more than all but two MLB stadiums
Until Saturday, the biggest expense every MLB team had to deal with was stadium construction. Ohtani has managed to single-handedly eclipse all but two of the league's current stadiums (Yankee Stadium and Globe Life Field).
As a matter of fact, Dodger Stadium cost $23 million in 1960s dollars. Adjust for inflation and that number doesn't even crack $300 million. The most recent renovation did cost $100 million, though.
Ohtani's deal will cost more more than every Andrew Friedman Rays payroll combined
The man in charge of negotiating that Ohtani deal would have been Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman. Before joining the Dodgers in 2014, Freidman was the general manager of the notoriously frugal Tampa Bay Rays.
How frugal are they? If you combine every payroll from the time Friedman first joined the team in 2004, as director of baseball development, to 2014, all 11 of those teams still come in lower than Ohtani's single deal.
Ohtani's deal outweighs the valuations of 6 NHL teams
If the Dodgers' owners missed out on Ohtani, they could have potentially used that money on any of a half-dozen NHL teams.
According to last year's Forbes' NHL valuations, six different teams (Winnipeg Jets, Carolina Hurricanes, Columbus Blue Jackets, Buffalo Sabres, Florida Panthers, Arizona Coyotes) are worth less than $700 million. The Vegas Golden Knights also cost $500 million in expansion fees, while the Seattle Kraken were $650 million.
Ohtani's deal contains more money than the entire payroll of nearly every women's sports league
The Dodgers' owners could have apparently bankrolled nearly the entirety of women's professional sports for year. According to the math of GOALS' Caroline Fitzgerald, Ohtani's contract is worth more than the entire annual payrolls of the WNBA, NWSL, Athletes Unlimited, WTA, LPGA, and PWHL combined.