Friday, March 25, 2016 |
The Dodgers' Cynical 30% Manipulation
That Time Warner Cable has offered to cut the price of SportsNet LA by 30% is admirable, but that the offer is good for only one year is ridiculous.As expected, Plaschke misunderstands the nature of the contract to justify his dudgeon— its more like renting an apartment than buying a car — but his admonition to "[m]ake the discount permanent" is entirely sound, and likely, doesn't go far enough. The reality is the Dodgers are not going to get that $5/head, now nor at any point in the future; bankruptcy looms. That the team uses Vin Scully's last season as a chit is unconscionable manipulation. I did not think it possible that the new ownership would be materially worse than the McCourts, but at least in this one dimension, they are: at least Frank never took the Dodgers off the air.
Would you make that deal? Buy somebody's car for one year at a deeply discounted price, then take your hands off the wheel and agree to renegotiate?
Thursday, January 03, 2013 |
Dear Jamie: Yes, You're Well And Truly Screwed. Now, STFU
Wednesday, May 30, 2012 |
Frank Investigated For "Criminal Financial Misconduct"
A federal grand jury is investigating possible criminal financial misconduct of the Dodgers and related entities during the ownership of Frank and Jamie McCourt, a person familiar with the matter told The Times.Authorities have requested documents from representatives of each of the McCourts, the person said. The investigation started early last year and appears to be focused on the accounting and propriety of Dodgers spending, the person said.
The Los Angeles Daily Journal first reported the investigation.
The McCourt divorce proceedings and the Dodgers' subsequent bankruptcy filing led to revelations about how team money had been diverted for the personal use of the McCourts. In a Bankruptcy Court filing, Major League Baseball alleged McCourt had "looted" $189 million from the Dodgers for personal use, a claim attorneys for McCourt called inflammatory and unsupportable.
Tuesday, May 01, 2012 |
Dodgers Sale Closes
Update: Maury Brown at Baseball Prospectus has the long form piece you expect.
Monday, April 23, 2012 |
Some Linkies
- The Dodgers are down to their last homestand with Frank McCourt as owner. And that's a good thing, mostly.
- Albert Pujols has gotten pull-happy in his stint with the Angels. Pujols' infamous quest for HR #1 as an Angel is part of an overall power outage plaguing the team, which trails the league in home runs.
- Tracy Ringolsby wonders if the Pujols acquisition represents the Angels following their own history with free agents, overspending on guys on the way down.
Labels: angels, dodgers, mccourts, sabermetrics, transactions
Friday, April 13, 2012 |
Dodgers Sale Approved
Levity: Judge Gross (and known Phillies fan) intimated he might insert language preventing the Dodgers from signing Cole Hamels.
Labels: dodgers, mccourts, phillies
Friday, April 06, 2012 |
MLB Concern Over Lack Of Details In Guggenheim Dodgers Bid May Derail Team Sale
Several individual owners have joined baseball officials in questioning why the Guggenheim group, led by Mark Walter, Stan Kasten and Magic Johnson, has not filed a more detailed Purchase and Sale Agreement more than a week after the group was selected from among three finalists by Frank McCourt, the outgoing owner who is selling the club through U.S. Bankruptcy Court.Previously, we have heard that McCourt may retain ownership but not control of the parking lots. My suspicion is more along the lines of something I missed a week or two ago from Ross Newhan (h/t MSTI), namely that the other owners are getting itchy about the possibility of a public company owning a share (and particularly, a majority share) of a baseball team. The idea that the Dodgers might be subject to SEC reporting requirements can't sit well with the other owners, who only too well know that the principle reason for wanting McCourt out was not so much that he was a bad and spendthrift owner as the fact that he lifted the curtain on the inner workings of the Dodgers.The group was expected to file a Purchase and Sale Agreement with MLB earlier this week, but postponed the filing for two days before submitting a short form agreement that lacked what MLB regards as most of the necessary details. Of particular interest to MLB is a breakdown of where the money is coming from to cover the $2.15 billion sale price and what role McCourt has in the ownership, control and profit-sharing of the Dodger Stadium parking lots.
Until MLB knows and reviews those details, according to sources, concern mounts about how the deal is financed and especially if McCourt stands to continue to profit from Dodger-related operations under the new ownership.
Related: Bill Shaikin reports that the sale agreement forbids the new owners to make comments disparaging to the McCourts. This scumbag cannot go away fast enough.
Thursday, March 29, 2012 |
More Linkies On The Dodgers Sale
- ESPN's Buster Olney (behind the pay wall?) thinks the Dodgers should be treated as a work of art. I find his reasoning entirely unconvincing. Comparing the 2012 Dodgers sale to the 1973 Yankees sale is false in two vital dimensions:
- George Steinbrenner was one man, but the Magic/Kasten/Guggenheim buyers are a group. The difference is vital. One man can afford the luxury of not worrying too much about recouping the cost; a corporation — and let us not forget, that is what we are dealing with here — cannot. Their charge is to operate the business as a business.
- Steinbrenner bought low, while the Guggenheim group appears to have paid a premium. The Yankees spent most of the 60's and early 70's in the doldrums as a consequence of CBS ownership. The sale price was correspondingly depressed. Contrast that with the Dodgers, which had a very active and lengthy bidding process, with an outcome catalyzed by widely reported multi-billion-dollar TV revenue awaiting the winner. I have already made my case for why I think these numbers are vastly inflated and unsustainable. This avenue (and it is the main one) for recouping the sale price is therefore constrained, at least.
“It was the cost of owning one of baseball’s most storied franchises,” he said in a telephone interview and added: “I don’t want to realize a return on investment on buying the Dodgers. I want to have a multi-generational relationship that changes my life, Magic’s life, Magic’s grandchildren’s lives and all of our lives.”
— I don't for one second believe that someone with that much money won't, ultimately, operate the business as a business. A frog does not turn into a camel just because it leaves the water. - The Dodgers are once again the subject of a rumor for every agent hoping his client can get a silly deal. I guess it's a good thing — it means the team is flush, and people recognize this, or at least, so the perception goes.
- "You'll see the team invest money" says Magic. Well, of course, but this answers not at all the questions of (a) enough and (b) intelligence.
- Molly Knight thinks an eventual lawsuit over the parking lots is inevitable, as Frank will chafe if his majority partners show little interest in developing them.
- Andrew Zimbalist thinks the deal makes no sense:
"It was an extraordinary and surprising price," said Andrew Zimbalist, a professor of economics at Smith College. "I rarely admit to not anticipating these things but I did not anticipate a $2 billion price. Keep in mind, in addition to the price, the new ownership group will have to invest something in the neighborhood of $300 million to refurbishing Dodger Stadium and that price does not include $150 million for the surrounding real estate. At the end of the day, you have to question this deal."
I am inclined — obviously — to agree. "[N]ow we're into buying art and I can't value art" says University of Michigan sports management professor Mark Rosentraub. Zimbalist also makes a point that has subsequently occurred to me:"One of the things that commissioner Selig was trying to avoid when he did not authorize the contract between McCourt and Fox was he thought McCourt would take the money and pocket it instead of using it to build the Dodgers," Zimbalist said. "That indirectly will happen anyway because McCourt is going to get his money and the new ownership will have to use a good chunk of the television money to pay off their asset purchase."
That is, Bud Selig (and the rest of MLB ownership) simply wanted rid of Frank McCourt; it wasn't his operation of the team so much, but his style that chafed.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012 |
Dodgers Sold To Magic/Kasten Group For $2B
Update: McCourt has enough dough to buy the Mets. LOL.
Conflicting info on whether McCourt continues to own the parking lots. Jim Alexander says no, Molly Knight says yes.
Update 2: The answer seems to be "yes". Molly Knight:
Again, from McCourt's press release on the parking lots: "Mr. McCourt and certain affiliates of the purchasers will also be forming (1/2)Update 3: LAT on the deal:
..a joint venture, which will acquire the Chavez Ravine property for an additional $150 million." (2/2)
If the deal closes as expected, the Dodgers would be owned by an entity called Guggenheim Baseball Partners and run by Stan Kasten, the former president of the Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals.Molly Knight:
Someone better hand Jamie McCourt a stiff cocktail. She "only" gets $131 million out of the deal.
Update 4: ESPN LA.
Update 5: The parking lots will be controlled by the incoming Magic/Kasten group.
Update 3/28: The dodgers.com story is here, with additional biographic info on Stan Kasten here. Jon Weisman's take on the team's to-do list can be found at ESPN, while Mike Petriello's thoughts can be found here and here. "Finally seeing him on his way out, well… it’s like Christmas multiplied by your birthday times twelve Super Bowls, plus kittens." And puppies. And ponies. I hope. I want to get something out on this later today; my initial reaction is that the purchase price is so high that many of the issues MLB claimed to have with McCourt ownership are still around for the new Magic/Kasten group. Read this way, the McCourts' eviction can be seen as a pure morality play, a verdict rendered on the squandiferous and self-absorbed McCourts. That's perhaps a bit harsh, but I can't understand how MLB feels this incoming bid — which has even more debt to buy the team (at least half, by what I recall) — is in better straits financially.
Monday, March 26, 2012 |
The End Is Nigh: Dodgers Sale Groups Whittled To Three
McCourt and his advisers have projected a sale price of at least $1.5 billion. Is that going to happen?That might depend on whether McCourt includes the Dodger Stadium parking lots in the sale. The bidders would like him to sell the lots. He is not required to do so, and he has said he intends to keep them.
If he does, the offers for the Dodgers could drop to the point in which McCourt might not make much more than $1.1 billion, the approximate amount he needs to pay off debts and taxes, according to multiple people familiar with the sale process. McCourt could bet on revenue from future development.
The parking lot options might not be limited to "sell" or "keep." A bidder could get an option to buy them a later date, for example, or offer McCourt a share of any development revenue.
Saturday, March 24, 2012 |
And Then There Were Three
The three finalists include a group led by hedge-fund billionaire Steven Cohen and Los Angeles billionaire and philanthropist Patrick Soon-Shiong; a group led by Magic Johnson and veteran baseball executive Stan Kasten; and St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke.It's weird how little I find myself caring about who wins the team, which is probably by itself bad, because it means McCourt has thoroughly destroyed my ability for rational thought when it comes to the Dodgers. After all, the last thing we need is another replay of the McCourt era, or to bring in (using an example of worst-case scenarios from other sports) a Donald Sterling sort of ownership. It's an enervation that seems to be going around in the Dodger blogosphere, albeit with Jon for entirely different reasons.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012 |
A Fairy Tale Dodger Fans Hope Comes True
Beside the most obvious reasons – buyers want every inch of Dodger Stadium included, the lots will land Frank un-spendable fortune if sold now or in the near future, and everyone (probably even including McCourt himself) wants this over once and for all – selling the team lock, stock and a few of Manny’s leftover corked barrels is the simplest and the most logical thing to do.True as far as it goes, but at that point he did not have an agreement that he could retain the parking lots and none else. While it might be nice to fantasize about the team retaining its historic revenue generators, there's no guarantee that the bidders won't accept buying the team without Frank McCourt attached as a landlord.Plus, once upon a time from Frank McCourt, there was something like this: “I’m not selling the team, I’m not selling the team, Boston baked beans, Celtics, Patriots, get out my face, I’m not selling the team!”
Thursday, February 23, 2012 |
Rick Caruso And Joe Torre Withdraw Their Bid And Why That's A Good Thing (Most Likely)
This is a suspicion — and only that — but the $1.5 billion-plus bids the team is fielding now are at least in part contingent on the team being sold along with the parking lots. And if Frank is not selling the parking lots — as he has repeatedly said he won't — along with the team, then the price will come down accordingly. As it has been my considered opinion that overpaying for the Dodgers will lead to bad teams (to make up for the overpayment), this cannot help but be a good thing in the short and long terms. My hope, anyway, is that McCourt intransigence will eventually mean he cannot recoup enough to make good with his wife. That will force him to sell the parking lots.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 |
Dodgers, Fox Cease Hostilities
That loan is secured by McCourt's malpractice claim against Bingham McCutchen, the Boston-based law firm responsible for the faulty marital property agreement upon which McCourt relied to establish his sole ownership of the Dodgers. The agreement was invalidated, and ultimately McCourt agreed to settle his divorce by paying his ex-wife $131 million by April 30.Fox retained the right to challenge any sale of the team, in part or in whole, to Time Warner Cable. The settlement also clarified that Time Warner Cable is bound by a provision of the TV contract that hampers the ability of ESPN, Comcast or Time Warner to hold a share of a Dodgers' cable channel.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011 |
Post Boxing Day Bullety Stuff
- We know more about the district court's stay of the Dodgers TV rights auction:
Stark said lawyers for Fox have demonstrated a substantial likelihood they will succeed in January's hearing. That's because the bankruptcy judge who freed the Dodgers from the current contract arrangement with Fox improperly relied on a single case in making his decision, Stark said. In addition, Stark wrote that U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross likely made two factual mistakes: finding that the sale of the broadcasting rights was necessary to ensure creditors were paid and finding that the broadcasting rights needed to be sold to maximize the team's value.
- Here's a fascinating New York Times article on the post-Moneyball A's, and how the period documented in that book actually represented a high-water mark for the franchise. Beane, apparently, has started to look beyond baseball for his intellectual and career challenges; it seems that with the team stalled in Oakland, he's not especially interested in it. After his deal ends in 2014, I expect he will resign.
- The Angels signed Ryan Langerhans to a one-year minor league contract. Of course, the real reason to read this is that the Register's Sam Miller wrote it.
Labels: angels, athletics, dodgers, hot stove, mccourts, transactions
Friday, December 23, 2011 |
District Court Stays Dodgers TV Rights Sale
Update: The LAT story.
Thursday, December 15, 2011 |
Judge Gross Calls Fox Early TV Rights Sale Objections "Disingenuous"
Gross called Fox's damage claims "highly speculative and therefore unsubstantiated." Gross also cited as "never supported by evidence" the claim of former Fox Sports Networks President Robert Thompson that Fox would have discounted the Dodgers' contract by 25% without the negotiating rights now in dispute.Fox has an exclusive negotiating window that lasts through January 19; thereafter, the rights can be auctioned.
Wednesday, December 07, 2011 |
Frank Must Sell Dodgers By April
Tuesday, December 06, 2011 |
Dodgers Add Hairston, Jr., Frank Has "Absolute" Control Over Parking Lots, Josh Bard A New Dodger
- Belated: The Dodgers signed Jerry Hairston, Jr. to a 2-year/$6M deal. It's terrible. That is all.
- The Dodgers have subpoenaed Chase
Carey, the same Fox exec who once traded Mike Piazza to Florida, earning the eternal wrath of Dodger fans everywhere.
On Dec. 27, Fox will ask Gross to dismiss the Dodgers from bankruptcy, arguing that owner Frank McCourt can repay the Dodgers' creditors by selling the team and that further legal intervention constitutes an abuse of bankruptcy protection.
Die in a fire, Frank. Oh, but it gets better: Frank has "sole and absolute discretion" as to whether the parking lots should be sold with the rest of the team's assets. - Howard Cole of the Register reports that the Dodgers are about to sign Josh Bard as a reserve catcher. Bard hit .210/.256/.333 with Seattle last year as a 33-year-old while playing in 26 games.
Labels: dodgers, mccourts, stupid ideas, transactions
Saturday, December 03, 2011 |
What If Frank Isn't Serious About Selling?
--Although McCourt has a year to go under his current television contract with Fox, he has been seeking permission to negotiate with other media outlets. Fox has opposed that procedure, figuring it would ultimately negotiate a new contract wiith a new owner. The dispute has gone to mediation, a process that was supposed to end last week but was extended through the current week, suggesting that some form of progress is being made. Suppose McCourt emerges with an extension with Fox or the right to pursue a multi year, multi million dollar deal with another media outlet.Much more there, but I won't believe it until the weasel is gone from our shores.--Suppose, at that point, McCourt figures he has or will have enough to pay creditors, his $130 million divorce from Jamie and retain operation of the Dodgers. All of these suppositions fall under the authority of the bankruptcy court, and the biggest challenge then for McCourt would have to be suing Selig for coercion in forcing him to sign his sale agreement with MLB.
Labels: dodgers, mccourts, stupid ideas
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