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Thread: Dodgers

  1. #1

    Dodgers

    I live in LA but am not a big Dodger fan having grown up elsewhere.

    I am also not a Bud Selig fan but I must applaud him for having MLB baseball take over the Dodgers. Almost all Dodger fans fully support the move. He should have done it sooner.

    Here are some of the issues
    The McCourts loaned themselves around $140Million dollars to support a lavish lifestyle that included the purchase of 4 expensive homes. My guess is that they bought near the peak of the real estate market and the houses are worth much less.

    The McCourts had their sons on the payroll at salaries in the $200K -$400K range. In their divorce trial Frank could not explain what they did.

    As if by design the McCourts have made the Dodgers a less family fun place to go. Parking has been jacked up, repairs to the stadium have not been made, concession lines are long. A big innovation seems to be all you can eat tickets. I assume that the buyers need a lot of beer to wash all of it down. There are other changes. A Giants fan is in a coma from an attack on Opening Day and now I am told police are everywhere.

    Another innovation is half priced beer nights. They were canceled after the attack on Opening Day.

    With the higher priced parking more fans are parking on streets near the stadium and then relieving themselves on the street on their way to the car.

    Frank McCourt tried to borrow $200M from Fox. Evidently he was going to use the money to pay off Jamie in the divorce settlement. The money was really an advance on TV rights, money that should be used to build the Dodgers not pay off an ex wife.
    Selig vetoed the idea.

    When Selig turned down the $200M, Frank borrowed $30M personally from Fox to make payroll. His collateral - future payments from an unfiled lawsuit against the law firm that botched the marital settlement agreement.

    Evidently the IRS is interested in after the McCourts over the $140M loans they took and other issues that came out in their divorce trial.

    While it is a small item, to show how ridiculous they are, the McCourts employed a physicist and healer to think positive thoughts about the team, from his home 3,000 miles away in New England.

    When this is over it will make a great book.

    SoCal

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Lewisville, NC
    Yikes, SoCal...

    Is everything drama with L.A. area sports?
    USC Trojans and their travails with NCAA
    L.A. Kings grasp defeat from the jaws of victory in their playoff game
    Kobe, Coach Phil and the long-running soap opera Lakers
    Now, the Dodgers featured in Divorce Court

    Sports or TV mini-series?

  3. #3

    Luckily

    Quote Originally Posted by roywhite View Post
    Yikes, SoCal...

    Is everything drama with L.A. area sports?
    USC Trojans and their travails with NCAA
    L.A. Kings grasp defeat from the jaws of victory in their playoff game
    Kobe, Coach Phil and the long-running soap opera Lakers
    Now, the Dodgers featured in Divorce Court

    Sports or TV mini-series?
    I am not from around here so most of this amuses me.
    My wife is a Trojan so I am thrown into the USC travails.
    I would say"

    Dodgers are a super soap opera, divorce court, tragedy. Very sad. The McCourts are just scum in my opinion and they have ruined a great franchise. Hopefully a new owner will bring them back. What is amazing is that they do have good pitching and some good players.

    The last USC President did a great job at everything except overseeing athletics. I think he figured that was no win with the alums. They are actually in good shape with this President and AD.

    Don't follow hockey.

    I guess Phil Jackson retires finally. Will be a new era for the Lakers. Unlike the others they are champions.

    SoCal

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by roywhite View Post
    Is everything drama with L.A. area sports?
    Doesn't sound a whole lot different than NYC or Boston. Or even the Triangle with college basketball.

    This is what I like about Denver sports. The success of the teams here is proportional to the extent to which they just play the damn game and don't screw around with drama. See the Nuggets this year and pre/post-Melo.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    The City of Brotherly Love except when it's cold.
    Quote Originally Posted by SoCalDukeFan View Post
    I live in LA but am not a big Dodger fan having grown up elsewhere.

    I am also not a Bud Selig fan but I must applaud him for having MLB baseball take over the Dodgers. Almost all Dodger fans fully support the move. He should have done it sooner.

    Here are some of the issues
    The McCourts loaned themselves around $140Million dollars to support a lavish lifestyle that included the purchase of 4 expensive homes. My guess is that they bought near the peak of the real estate market and the houses are worth much less.

    The McCourts had their sons on the payroll at salaries in the $200K -$400K range. In their divorce trial Frank could not explain what they did.

    As if by design the McCourts have made the Dodgers a less family fun place to go. Parking has been jacked up, repairs to the stadium have not been made, concession lines are long. A big innovation seems to be all you can eat tickets. I assume that the buyers need a lot of beer to wash all of it down. There are other changes. A Giants fan is in a coma from an attack on Opening Day and now I am told police are everywhere.

    Another innovation is half priced beer nights. They were canceled after the attack on Opening Day.

    With the higher priced parking more fans are parking on streets near the stadium and then relieving themselves on the street on their way to the car.

    Frank McCourt tried to borrow $200M from Fox. Evidently he was going to use the money to pay off Jamie in the divorce settlement. The money was really an advance on TV rights, money that should be used to build the Dodgers not pay off an ex wife.
    Selig vetoed the idea.

    When Selig turned down the $200M, Frank borrowed $30M personally from Fox to make payroll. His collateral - future payments from an unfiled lawsuit against the law firm that botched the marital settlement agreement.

    Evidently the IRS is interested in after the McCourts over the $140M loans they took and other issues that came out in their divorce trial.

    While it is a small item, to show how ridiculous they are, the McCourts employed a physicist and healer to think positive thoughts about the team, from his home 3,000 miles away in New England.

    When this is over it will make a great book.

    SoCal
    A sad development for a storied franchise. Born and raised in LA during the era of Koufax, Drysdale, Wills, Gilliam, Davises et al.

    Lot's of blame to go around. Does MLB due diligence extend beyond the ability to write the initial check? My interest in all sports professional could not be more ambivalent.

  6. #6
    This topic prompted a discussion over dinner last night. My husband and I agreed that if we ever owned a baseball team, he would give it to me since he's not a huge fan. Hockey team, I get the team but he gets a luxury box of his own. Football, he gets team but I get the luxury suite. The Cameron tickets that we have now, we sit together in mutual truce since we would likely fight each other to the death over them.
    (At first he shouted, "MINE".... silly husband!)

    So, we're ready to go buy a few teams now.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Feb 2007

  8. #8

    Double Standard

    At first glance, this seemed a good move by baseball, with the soap opera playing out like it did.

    But when you start peeling back the layers, Selig is on thin ground here. While all of these giant monetary figures seem exorbitant and outlandish, they are not out of line:

    In fact, there are specific financial requirements for MLB teams - and, even with the oddity of taking a loan to make payroll, the Dodgers actually are within those specs. There are, however, several teams that do NOT meet those requirements.

    And, as the team's owner, what he does with the team's money is HIS decision. It's not up to baseball to tell him what to do. Maybe McCourt is not upgrading the stadium because he wants a new one somewhere else, but doesn't have the political clout, yet. Raising peripheral pricing? Sounds like a business.

    What this is all about is a "swinging" contest by Selig. He said "no" to the advance - which ticked off McCourt. Why? Because Selig allowed the Nolan Ryan group to take an advance on TV money to stave off the Mark Cuban bid for the Rangers last year. Double standard.

    So McCourt went to his personal contacts and got the loan from Fox. Slap in the face to Selig.

    Ultimately, Selig has the bigger - er - slap - and here we are. But to prevent McCourt from prevailing in the lawsuit, my guess is that MLB will have to prove they are planning to take over (if not actually take over) the teams that aren't meeting their financial obligations. I think ESPN said there were 4 of them - which would have baseball operating 16% of the franchises.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Hot'Lanta... home of the Falcons!
    Quote Originally Posted by cf-62 View Post
    And, as the team's owner, what he does with the team's money is HIS decision. It's not up to baseball to tell him what to do.
    That is simply not true. The commissioner has the extremely powerful "best interests of baseball" clause that allows him a tremendous amount of power and say over virtually all aspects of how a franchise is run. Generally, the commish does not use this power, but it is not like the power does not exist.

    Lets say a team wanted to sell its best players -- not trade the, sell them. The commissioner would step in and stop that. This same principal applies to other assets of a team -- like the TV rights.

    In the case of the Dodgers, the court filings in the divorce case have revealed that the McCourts were turning the Dodgers into a piggy bank that financed all kids of exorbitant silliness on their behalf. Bud Selig was worried that McCourt was going to mortgage the future of the Dodgers by signing a very long-term TV deal and then take the money from that deal and use it for his own personal gain (to finance the divorce and pay off tremendous personal debts). As a result, the Dodgers would be left a financially crippled franchise with no hope of getting lucrative TV money for the next 20 years. There was no way the commissioner could allow that to happen.

    Think of it this way -- a man buys widget-maker XYZ for 1 million dollars. He then turns around to company ABC and tells them he will provide widgets to them for the next 50 years for 3 million dollars. He then takes the 3 million dollars and just walks away from XYZ company.

    Now, think of McCourt's potential deal with Fox for the TV rights. McCourt had bought the Dodgers for about 450 million (about half the deal was debt, some of which McCourt has already defaulted upon). He was going to sell the TV rights to Dodger games for 3 billion dolalrs for the next 20 years (or something like that). He would use the 3 billion to buy off his wife and (if history is any indication) he would probably find a bunch of silly and extravagant ways to spend the rest of the money. My bet is that inside of 5 years, he would be selling the Dodgers (or just letting a bank take them over after he defaulted on some deal). But, if things work as you say they do, he would have $3 billion in his pocket. What does he care if his $500 million team is now next to worthless because he sold their TV rights for the next couple decades? Can you really see the commissioner allowing that to happen?

    To compare this situation to the Rangers and Mets just does not fit to me. While I agree that the Mets are in a bad way and the commish may have to step in at some point, there is no indication that the Wilpons or the folks who bought the Rangers have anything but honorable intentions in mind for the teams they own. In the case of the Dodgers and the McCourt family, it would appear that honorable was never part of their vocabulary.

    -Jason "just my .02... probably worth less than that" Evans
    Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?

  10. #10

    Best Interest of Baseball

    Quote Originally Posted by cf-62 View Post
    At first glance, this seemed a good move by baseball, with the soap opera playing out like it did.

    But when you start peeling back the layers, Selig is on thin ground here. While all of these giant monetary figures seem exorbitant and outlandish, they are not out of line:

    In fact, there are specific financial requirements for MLB teams - and, even with the oddity of taking a loan to make payroll, the Dodgers actually are within those specs. There are, however, several teams that do NOT meet those requirements.

    And, as the team's owner, what he does with the team's money is HIS decision. It's not up to baseball to tell him what to do. Maybe McCourt is not upgrading the stadium because he wants a new one somewhere else, but doesn't have the political clout, yet. Raising peripheral pricing? Sounds like a business.

    What this is all about is a "swinging" contest by Selig. He said "no" to the advance - which ticked off McCourt. Why? Because Selig allowed the Nolan Ryan group to take an advance on TV money to stave off the Mark Cuban bid for the Rangers last year. Double standard.

    So McCourt went to his personal contacts and got the loan from Fox. Slap in the face to Selig.

    Ultimately, Selig has the bigger - er - slap - and here we are. But to prevent McCourt from prevailing in the lawsuit, my guess is that MLB will have to prove they are planning to take over (if not actually take over) the teams that aren't meeting their financial obligations. I think ESPN said there were 4 of them - which would have baseball operating 16% of the franchises.
    As Jason points out there is a clause about the best interests of baseball.

    I think it is easy, and it may be correct, to say that McCourt gave Selig a slap in the face with the personal loan so Selig took the team away. My guess is that that the threat of the IRS coming in was also a concern.

    On the field the Dodgers are not that bad. They have some good pitching and a couple of very good players. They play in a weak division. Some timely hitting and luck and they could make the playoffs.

    I know of no as in zero unbiased Dodger fans who support McCourt. The talk shows and letters to the papers etc run 100% against him.

    SoCal

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