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Captain Ned
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Dodgers Sale

Wed Mar 28, 2012 2:11 pm

$2 billion??? And McCourt retains a 50% interest in the parking lots and surrounding land?

I'm not sure that the Yankees are worth $2 billion with the stadium and all its accouterments.
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UberGerbil
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Re: Dodgers Sale

Wed Mar 28, 2012 3:34 pm

Forbes just released their valuations (which are always subject to dispute by both the teams and outside observers), pegging the Yankees at $1.85B and the Dodgers at $1.4. At the time that looked a little low to me, but have little but intuition to go on.
I find it hard to believe any group would want the team with McCourt still involved in any aspect of it, given all the financial shell games he's engaged in over the years.
 
idchafee
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Re: Dodgers Sale

Thu Mar 29, 2012 11:57 am

So you can mismanage your business, damn near bankrupt it, ruin the brand, make your organization a laughingstock and still cash out with a tidy profit? Only in professional sports.
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UberGerbil
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Re: Dodgers Sale

Thu Mar 29, 2012 1:22 pm

I'm not sure "mismanage" is strong enough. What the McCourt's did verges on fraud. Keep in mind MLB (ie, the other owners) loaned him and his wife money to buy the franchise in the first place (they had nothing like the resources necessary to buy the team on their own). They then split off all the cashflow pieces (ticketing, parking, etc) into separate companies and borrowed against those to fund their lifestyle ($10K a month on a hairstylist, 6-digit Dodgers jobs for each of their sons despite them having separate employment elsewhere, $14M swimming pool, etc). They also paid no income tax the entire time they were owners.

(This piece is dated now, and obviously long, but just look at the flowchart it contains showing all the pieces the Dodgers were broken into and borrowed against -- this is the "shell game" I was talking about)

Yet the little club of MLB owners will extend loans to guys like this (and Jeffery Loria in Miami, don't get me started) but they don't want anything to do with potential owners like Mark Cuban. (And with good reason, of course: they're scared someone like that will call them out on their stupidity)

In fact, the Dodger brand isn't ruined, and the team is still close to competitive in the NL West. The team has a huge residual of goodwill among its fans (and fans of baseball in general) and all of its recent failures are tied directly to McCourt; as soon as he's gone, the new owners automatically get a boost by simply being "not McCourt" -- and doubly so if the public face is Magic Johnson. The trouble is, if they're forced to still be in bed with McCourt in any way, his stench will cling to the new regime (whether it deserves to or not). They need to get rid of him completey.... which, unfortunately, probably means he gets a nice added payout to sell the parking lots and go away. Though I doubt they'll do it, I'd love to see the new owners launch a civil suit against McCourt once they get their hands on all the books -- I'm sure there would be plenty of basis.
 
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Re: Dodgers Sale

Mon Apr 02, 2012 9:28 pm

Based on an interview with Stan Kasten I saw with Brian Kenny on MLB Network last week, they're working on a new TV deal and they obviously want what the Angels got. What the Angels got was something like 1.5B over 10 years, and it was enough for Anaheim to go out and sign Pujols and give CJ Wilson way more money than he's worth (an aside: how annoyed would you be if you were Jered Weaver and this tool got as much as you did?). The new ownership group is well aware of where their income is going to come from.
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