Owners locked out players until July 23 last year. The Owners primarily care about the playoffs, everyone with a cable bill still pays carriage fees to the Owners for their RSNs and MLB Channel showing whatever whether there are games or not, and they'll also get reduced advertising for their replacement fishing, poker, talking heads shows, reruns of prior games, etc.. Not paying players covers any losses from the national TV contracts.
COVID allowed owners to short play their 2020 Spring Training leases, but they would likely have to have financial compensation/concessions to Arizona/Florida governments to avoid attempting ST in ridiculous Summer desert/swamp conditions.
At some point, a court may order Owners to begin negotiating, as is what happened in March 1995, when Judge Sonya Sotomayor saved baseball and ordered MLB Owners to send their scab players home and play baseball with actual Major League Players. Games started later in April 1995 to allow a haphazard partial spring training, played under the previous CBA terms. The final deal wasn't signed until after the 1996 season, two seasons after Sonya Sotomayor's ruling.
Owners could continue negotiating with the MLB Players Association just as they had over the course of two seasons (1995-1996) until a new deal is reached. However, MLB Owners have ZERO intentions to begin negotiating in good faith unless ordered by a Federal judge or reaching a stage where the players give them nearly everything they demand.
By then Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, who saved MLB as a district judge in 1995 by striking down Owner Bud Selig's scab player scheme, is escorted by Jorge Posada to throw out the first pitch at Yankees Stadium September 26, 2009,
Yankees fans hold racist tomahawks gavels to honor Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, September 26, 2009.