Here is a nice piece breaking down some of details of the new CBA. Kind of a CAB for Dummies type things. Short and informative read.
What do fans need to understand?
Three things: 1. Their favorite teams now have $7.5 million more than they had a week ago to spend this year in free agency, which starts Friday night. 2. No strikes for another six years. 3. Ticket prices will continue to go up.
How were low-revenue teams convinced that such an expensive new deal was tolerable?
Some of their worries were addressed by new revenue sharing.
And just how does that work?
An average of $150 million a year from "new revenue" plus contributions from the top 15 teams of previously unshared locally generated revenue is redistributed to the bottom 17 clubs, provided the bottom teams are spending 65 percent of their revenues on players. Some high-revenue teams are spending only 40 percent of revenue on players, thus the perceived problem of competitive imbalance. To start, the top five teams toss in $3 million apiece, the next five $2 million and the next five $1 million. That's $30 million from the high-revenue teams.