{"id":878094,"date":"2026-08-31T10:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T10:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/878094\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T10:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T10:04:09","slug":"mlb-lockout-fears-fuel-bets-on-atlanta-braves-stock-as-cba-talks-loom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/878094\/","title":{"rendered":"MLB Lockout Fears Fuel Bets on Atlanta Braves Stock As CBA Talks Loom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the group chat with my friends from high school, there&#8217;s no more polarizing topic than baseball.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re divided pretty evenly between loyal diehards, and those who see baseball fading in relevance \u2014 a sport where only three or four teams are trying to win the World Series, and everyone else is just developing players to eventually trade to them.<\/p>\n<p>If you can&#8217;t tell, I fit squarely into the latter camp. I can&#8217;t watch a game without getting bored within five minutes. The gameplay is just too slow.<\/p>\n<p>So you can imagine my joy when I came across a <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.s3partners.com\/articles\/long-short-the-atlanta-braves\" data-track-click=\"{&quot;click_type&quot;:&quot;other&quot;,&quot;element_name&quot;:&quot;body_link&quot;,&quot;event&quot;:&quot;outbound_click&quot;}\" rel=\" nofollow noopener\">research note from financial analytics firm S3 Partners<\/a> that said short sellers are increasingly betting on a Major League Baseball lockout starting in December.<\/p>\n<p>The proxy S3 used was short interest in <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/markets.businessinsider.com\/stocks\/atlanta_braves-stock\" data-track-click=\"{&quot;element_name&quot;:&quot;body_link&quot;,&quot;event&quot;:&quot;tout_click&quot;,&quot;index&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;,&quot;product_field&quot;:&quot;bi_value_unassigned&quot;}\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">class C shares for the Atlanta Braves<\/a> \u2014 the only publicly traded MLB club. The chart below shows that short interest as a percentage of equity float has surged since late May.<\/p>\n<p>The inflection point came on May 28, when MLB owners proposed a salary cap, which was a nonstarter for the players union and ratcheted up tension ahead of upcoming labor negotiations. (<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2026-08-21\/mlb-lockout-fears-spur-rush-of-shorts-into-atlanta-braves-shares\" data-track-click=\"{&quot;click_type&quot;:&quot;other&quot;,&quot;element_name&quot;:&quot;body_link&quot;,&quot;event&quot;:&quot;outbound_click&quot;}\" rel=\" nofollow noopener\">h\/t Bloomberg<\/a> for flagging that date.) Short-sellers have since piled into bets against Braves shares, which could suffer if a prolonged lockout hits next season.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Every week without a deal between December and spring training is the shorts&#8217; friend,&#8221; the S3 research team wrote.<\/p>\n<p>To get into specifics, S3 found that there&#8217;s been a record-setting 142% rise in total Braves shares shorted since the start of 2026. That includes a 14% increase in the last 30 days.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also worth noting that Braves shares are sitting near record highs. The stock has benefited from soaring sports-franchise valuations, particularly following the record $12.5 billion sale of the LA Lakers. It&#8217;s common for stocks at highs to attract short interest from investors looking to hedge. Still, the timing of the move makes the MLB labor standoff hard to ignore.<\/p>\n<p>                                  Want more Business Insider in your news feed?<\/p>\n<p class=\"preferred-sources-module-desc body-xs\">\n                                    Add BI in Google so our reporting is easier to find when you\u2019re searching for what matters.\n                                  <\/p>\n<p>So with their precious MLB potentially on ice into next season, my diehard friends would have nothing to counter non-baseball programming. Visions are dancing in my head of incessant, unopposed Major League Soccer updates.<\/p>\n<p>Now if you&#8217;ll excuse me, one of my baseball friends just sent another video of Pete Crow-Armstrong hitting a home run. I have to go and pretend that I watched it by giving it a &#8220;like.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-italic\">Your guide to what&#8217;s moving markets<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the group chat with my friends from high school, there&#8217;s no more polarizing topic than baseball. We&#8217;re&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":878095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[304569,3307,1875,304570,49,48,94518,1118,42380,304572,304573,462,304574,10492,304571,102712,288725,257752,82],"class_list":["post-878094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-atlanta-braves-stock","tag-baseball","tag-bet","tag-braves-share","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-december","tag-friend","tag-high-school","tag-late-may","tag-lockout-hit-next-season","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-lockout-fear","tag-player","tag-proxy-s3","tag-record-high","tag-short-interest","tag-short-seller","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}