Baseball

May 6: NY Mets next error could be junk debt: The Mets' latest off-field snafu involves an announcement from rating agency Moody's Investors Service of a possible downgrade to junk of municipal bonds sold in 2006 to finance the Mets' new stadium Citi Field. - Gerald Magpily

April 23: Yankees, Mets top Forbes' MLB valuation list: Team values increased an average of 1% over the past year, to $482 million, an all-time high, according to Forbes' 2009 Major League baseball valuation list. Sitting on top of that list No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, are the New York Yankees and New York Mets. - Gerald Magpily

April 20: Mets players take a sip of SoNu: Johan Santana and Jose Reyes will receive equity in exchange for endorsements from the startup company that makes fruity water with a cocktail of vitamins and electrolytes. - Gerald Magpily

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April 8: Mets, Madoff estate to sell tickets: The New York Mets and the SIPC trustee overseeing the wind-down of Bernie Madoff's firm cut a deal to sell the fraudster's season tickets at CIti Field. - John Blakeley

March 31: Yankees, Mets feel the credit crunch: Two brand new baseball stadiums (subsidized by the taxpayers) adorn New York City as both the Yankees and Mets get ready to open the 2009 season. But the two stadiums designed for a precredit crisis economy may be having some problems filling those $2,000 VIP seats with Wall Street limping along and conspicuous consumption very much out of favor. - George White

March 26: Stars, Rangers latest teams for sale: MLB's Texas Rangers and NHL's Dallas Stars are the latest teams to hit the auction block after an active week as far as sports auctions are concerned. Tom Hicks announced that he will look for minority investors for up to 49% stakes in both teams. - Demitri Diakantonis

Feb. 20: When A-Rod became the $252M man: It may not have been the largest deal we covered in 2000, but the $252 million signing of Alex Rodriguez by the Texas Rangers is still one of the most memorable from that year. - Thomas Groppe

Feb. 11: Congressmen fight for Citi Field: Five Democratic New York congressmen oppose Rep. Dennis Kucinich's, D-Ohio, demands that Citigroup Inc. break its advertising agreement with the Mets. - Matthew Wurtzel

Kucinich to Citi: Stop advertising; Citi's $400M naming rights deal under scrutiny

Feb. 4: Moorad to buy San Diego Padres: The San Diego Padres have agreed to sell the club to an investor group led by former Arizona Diamondbacks CEO Jeff Moorad. Industry observers have previously said the club would sell within its current valuation range of $400 million. The deal will include a $240 million debt service for the construction of the team's home field Petco Park. Forbes magazine valued the Padres at $385 million along with $167 million in revenue in 2007.

Back on Jan. 2, the Padres said they had entered into exclusive negotiations with a Moorad-led investor group. Moorad resigned from his post to pursue a purchase the deal. - Demitri Diakantonis

Jan. 28: Times to auction Red Sox stake: New York Times Co. said it hired Goldman, Sachs & Co. to explore a sale of its 17.75% stake in New England Sports Ventures LLC, the owner of the Boston Red Sox. The Times acquired the stake -- for $75 million, according to the Times -- in 2002 as part of a consortium led by hedge fund manager John Henry. The consortium's $700 million bid included the assumption of nearly $40 million in debt. Press reports, the Boston Globe said, put the stake's value between $166 million and upward of $200 million. The news comes a week after the seeming end to the last baseball auction, which George White rightly noted, wasn't the only game in town. - Carolyn Murphy

Jan. 22: The Ricketts family confirmed that Tribune Co. has selected it as the final bidder in the auction for the Chicago Cubs. Tom Ricketts, whose father, Joe, founded Ameritrade, beat out Chicago real estate investor Hersch Klaff and New York private equity executives Marc Utay and Leo Hindery. The bid is estimated to be worth $900 million. - Peter Moreira and Demitri Diakantonis

Meanwhile, Gerald Magpily wonderend in December whether selling its Boston Red Sox stake be a score for the New York Times. And the New York Mets were still standing after the Madoff scandal.

Back in Chicago, Sam Zell had been trying to sell off the Chicago Cubs in a move to slash debt incurred when he took Cubs parent Tribune Co. private for $8.2 billion in 2007. Tribune, meanwhile, filed for bankruptcy and it seems Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich may have meddled in the Cubs auction.

Citing a Reuters report in early December, White wrote:
 
"Consortia led by Tom Ricketts, the CEO of Chicago investment bank Incapital; private equity dealmaker Marc Utay of Clarion Capital Partners; and Chicago real estate executive Hersh Klaff have all entered offers ... a group headed up by Jim Crane, the former CEO of freight-forwarding company EGL, may also be in the mix as well, the report said. Conspicuously missing from the bidding process was Internet billionaire Mark Cuban, the flamboyant owner of NBA basketball's Dallas Mavericks."

Cuban, meanwhile, is fighting insider trading charges. 

Meanwhile, in late July, Dealscape's Matt Wurtzel noted that The New York Times took up Citigroup's $20 million per year, 20-year deal for the naming rights to new a Mets stadium. But why only question the Citi deal? He asked. "In addition to Citi, there are a number of other banks whose names adorn stadiums and arenas, and some (Bank of America Corp., Wachovia Corp. and KeyCorp) are in equally -- if not more -- precarious circumstances than Citi." See more on naming rights below.

And Mo Vaughn, the one-time Mets slugger, was said June 30 to be in the running for Starrett City, the Brooklyn affordable housing complex put up for auction by Starrett City Associate. Starrett and the state government decided to keep the complex affordable, which quelled interest from some larger real estate companies and kept the bidding down between $600 million and $1 billion. The auction was subsequently scrapped.

But back to the Cubs. Uproar over the auction bubbled up in late February as Tribune owner Sam Zell reiterated during a CNBC interview Feb. 26 that he would consider selling the naming rights to Wrigley Field, evoking outcry from baseball purists but mostly shrugged shoulders from others.

A sale has been delayed because of Zell's plans to sell the team and the stadium separately and to have the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority acquire and renovate Wrigley, according to the Chicago Tribune and several other reports. Here are a few takes on the naming rights issue:

USA Today gave a little history and suggested revenue for naming rights is "soaring," pointing to the Mets November 2006 deal with Citi to name their ballpark Citi Field. "Zell suggested the Chicago-based Wrigley Co. buy the naming rights 'after getting it free for so long.' The ballpark, originally called Weeghman Park, was named Wrigley Field in 1926 after then-team owner William Wrigley Jr., founder of the chewing-gum company."

One AP take via Sports Illustrated: "Any company dumb enough to fork over good money to slap its name on the park wouldn't find the confines friendly at the moment and historically speaking, naming rights have been a lousy investment -- not to mention bad karma."

Tribune's Rick Morrissey echoed that sentiment:

If a corporation is silly enough to plunk down $50 million a year to have its name grafted onto Wrigley Field or, worse, if it is silly enough to erase the very mention of Wrigley, let it. And if that corporation believes people are suddenly going to start referring to the ballpark as Viagra Field or Can You Hear Me Now Stadium, it not only is silly, it is delusional.

Meanwhile, the AP noted earlier in February the naming rights deal expected to break records is that of the new stadium for the New York Giants and New York Jets, scheduled to open in 2010.

Down in D.C., March 30, 2008 was Opening Day for Nationals Park. The Washington Nationals finally came home to a shiny new ballpark along the Anacostia Waterfront March 30 to take on the Atlanta Braves. While the $611 million project was still in the final stages just weeks ago, D.C. was ready and tickets for the opener sold out in minutes.

This is the fourth season in Washington for the Nats, who landed in D.C. in 2005 after 36 years as the Montreal Expos. They finally got a new owner in 2006 and broke ground on the new park, which lets them waive goodbye to the weathered and historic RFK Stadium. (See more about the auction below.)

RECENT TRADES

The Atlanta Braves landed a new owner in 2007 after a year of negotiations. Time Warner Inc. sold the team to Liberty Media Corp. in a $1.5 billion deal that that valued the club at close to $461 million. Also included in the tax-free swap was about $960 million cash, 68.5 million Time Warner shares and Time Warner's craft magazines Leisure Arts. In exchange, Liberty retained a 2.8% stake in the company.

The Braves went on the block in December 2005, as Time Warner tightened the team's payroll and its attendance began to slip. The Braves deal came nine months after the last franchise auction wound up.

Seventeen months after beginning a search of its own, the Washington Nationals finally landed a new owner May 3, 2006--and they broke ground on a new stadium. Real estate developer Theodore Lerner and his investor army of seven took the Nationals from Major League Baseball for $450 million.

POWER HITTERS

The lofty valuations for both clubs fall behind the New York Yankees, New York Mets and Boston Red Sox, worth $1.3 billion, $824 million and $816 million respectively, according to Forbes. The Braves and the Nats, Forbes says, are worth $497 and $460 million, while the Cubs are valued at $642 million.

The Braves and the Nats also have a common tie. Lerner, who is local to D.C., which gave him a significant edge in bidding for the Nats, added former Braves president Stan Kasten to his bidding consortium one month ahead of winning the team.

• The groups Lerner and Co. beat out were led by Thayer Capital Partners chairman Fred Malek, also a Washingtonian, and Emmis Communications Corp. CEO Jeff Smulyan of Indianapolis, an outsider, viewed as a long shot.
• What had long delayed a deal was the D.C. City Council, which just couldn't make up its mind on whether to build a new stadium. The argument centered around whether the structure would displace low-income residents while redeveloping the waterfront. In December 2005, a decision was postponed until January and dragged on until February, when the group reversed an 8-5 vote against it, for a 9-4, in favor within hours. The final hurdle was cleared in March.
• An early prospective bidder, financier George Soros, drew heated criticism from Republicans who didn't want a prominent Democratic supporter to control the franchise.
• Another stalling point was that MLB ran the auction without an investment bank, drawing harsh criticism.
• The Nats went to Washington in 2005 after 36 years in Montreal as the Expos.

THE DEALMAKERS

The winning bidding consortium for the Nats included CBS' NFL Today host James Brown, former cabinet members under President Clinton and other notable Washingtonians. Rodney E. Slater, Clinton's transportation secretary, told the Washington Post one thing he would focus on is getting "youngsters interested in baseball." It's about time.

The Nats play was Lerner's third time vying for a baseball franchise. Lerner, who built D.C. suburban staples Tysons Corner Center and White Flint Mall, tried in 1971 to coax then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn to bring the Washington Senators back to the capital after they skipped town for Texas. He also made a bid for the Baltimore Orioles. For the love of the game.

BASEBALL FEVER

In 2005, baseball dealmakers had quite an off-season. In November, a group of Cincinnati businessmen swapped $270 million for a 70-to-80% stake in hometown Reds for $270 million. Meanwhile, Cuban was rumored to be eying the Pittsburgh Pirates. 

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