If you were looking forward to the spectacle of Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter squaring off from rival owners’ boxes in the NL East, this news will come as a disappointment. Per Thornton McEnery of the New York Post, A-Rod’s longshot attempt to pull together a bidding group for the Mets has been scuttled.
It seems that Rodriguez and fiancee Jenifer Lopez simply weren’t able to gain traction with potential co-investors and have decided to call off the effort. They made some headway with Wayne Rothbaum (see here and here) but obviously failed to put together a viable partnership.
The report goes on to dish about the Mets’ financial difficulties, which are a major factor in the ongoing efforts to sell the team. It seems the club could be looking at losses approaching or even reaching nine figures if the gates to Citi Field never open in 2020.
It’s certainly a suboptimal moment to be seeking a buyer for a baseball franchise. While the chance to own a New York team would normally hold great appeal, these aren’t typical times. The Mets’ longstanding financial woes loom larger than ever.
The difficult operational challenges facing a potential new owner are compounded by the fact that the current Wilpon ownership group is evidently committed to holding onto its ownership of the SNY regional sports network. Whether or not the Wilpons can keep their revenue-producing TV business while still moving the organization for a big price remains to be seen, but the marketplace seems rather skeptical.
Good!
Stay classy Aroid!
People are so triggered over Arod it’s funny. He’s no different than any other player from that time
AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
NO GOD NO… NO… Just let some rich dude buy out the Wilpons please!
Not goin to happen, they want to keep the money making network and sell the team for billions, no one is paying that for a team and not gettin control of all money making aspects of the team, that would be an idiotic business decision and billionaires are probably trash humans but they are not idiotic when it comes to business, the Wilpons ruining cohens purchase with their refusal to cede control was very telling that they are the idiots and will continue pounding sand with that franchise
Exactly parx. The Mets are worth about $1.95 without that network.
Where have you gone Mark Cuban. A borough turns its lonely eyes to you…..
MLB owners won’t approve him to be an owner. He’s been rejected too many times trying to buy the Cubs and got tired. I can’t imagine him wanting to ram his head into that wall again. Other easier and more glamorous ways of making money that don’t involve the Mets.
Yes, Cuban is a little…..outspoken at times.
It’s a shame because I would LOVE Cuban to be my owner. He’s outspoken and stuff, sure. But he doesn’t meddle in basketball decisions for the Mavericks. He’s a fan of his team and acts like a fan.
Baseball’s good old boys club wouldn’t allow him in even though he’d run a great organization.
Agreed. He’s a guarantee to rock the boat.
Can’t imagine Cuban wants in on a dying sport
Perhaps now a days probably true.
It is a shame that Mark Cuban doesn’t own the Pirates right now. That’s what let’s me know the owners make big time money. It would be the best interest in baseball to have a guy like him owning his childhood team in his hometown that is a small market.
For real! I would love to see a guy like Mark Cuban own a team. It did wonders in the NBA. MLB is bull for turning him down from the Cubs owner and didn’t he try to buy the Rangers too?
In 2010 when hicks went bankrupt. It was nolan, chuck Greenberg, and 2 current owners vs Cuban and jim crane. It went to auction and nolan/Greenberg won, unfortunately. Looked great 1st 5 yrs but been a train wreck since
GREENberg now that’s a great j/e/w name right there
That Cano/Diaz keeps looking worse and worse.
Here is the big problem with anyone who wants to purchase the Mets, The Wilpon brothers are the owners and have been for quite a while and the younger brother wants to be the sole owner so they set parameters up that no one in their right mind would agree to upon purchasing the team. Just like the last negotiations where they would remain owners for five years after the sale.
What brothers??? Fred and jeff wilpon are father and son
*mothers
Badda Bing!
Lets just go Green Bay Packers on the Mets and start a Go Fund Me page and the patrons of MLBTR will buy the Mets-
Strike Four can be put in charge of player dev
Dark side- Can be in control of contracts
Commonsense can take care of all the day to day common sense transactions ofc
MLB doesn’t allow community ownership like the Packers. Joan Croc
(bless her soul) tried to
GIVE the Padres to the
City of San Diego. The grand poobahs said NO!
Something about their financial books then being open to the public…..
Jorge- Agh fun fact I did not know about Joan,, pretty cool-
Outlaw- We will have robo umps, No fear, we will put a human on the Lf and Rf line, but more so just for the homey feel-
S4 skills would lead more to teaching the kids how to wash their hands properly and such as they climb the ladder to the bigs
The Indians are owned by a publicly traded company. If mlbtr readers created their own company and bought the Mets…loophole found! LOL
I think Liberty Media (Braves owners) is publicly traded. I might be mistaken there.
Do we really want strikefour in charge of developing our young players? I’m concerned they’ll take too many called third strikes, believing they’ll get four of them.
Lol I approve this comment
You forgot “nobumegualsnonlcs” can be put in charge of Ronald acuna’s acquisition since he swore he would be traded in 2 years bc he sucks.
RIP Mets fans again
Yeah the Phillies with their 69 year head start and same amount of World Series wins are doing awesome.
Nice
um, not making fun of them. i actually pity them.
The dark one is talking about Mets fans suffering under the leadership of the
Wonderous Wilpons. There was no slight intended…..
Because we all care about what our teams did 50+ years ago…
And this was not a dig at the Mets. We actually feel your pain, and know how deadly the Mets can be if they start to open their wallets again.
You sound like a child.
Ah cute…Mets fan bashing on a Phillies fan about starting a franchise many decades earlier and having the same amount of championships.
As a Marlins fan, I find the humor in that comment.
Carry on.
When you rich, but you aint RIIIIIIICCCCHHHHHHH
Boy that’s rough news. The Mets amazingly recovered enough from the Madoff scheme that forced them to sell everybody, but they have been treading water seems like ever since. At this point a canceled season seems like the Mets best chance this year to re tool and get everyone healthy possibly for next season.
Treading water all the way to the world series 2015 –
I really never get the Mets bashing, if they were centered in Minneapolis they would probably be considered a trendy pick every year to make the playoffs based on young talent-
Ny really cuts them down, Im sure the Yankee fans do the heavy lifting then the trolls take care of whats left
Sure they caught lighting in a bottle once recently but it’s about them not spending like the Yankees in that big market because they need to suck every possible dollar out of the franchise thanks to the idiotic decision to put all their marbles with Madoff. Remember a few years ago when they tried to make underpaid minor leaguers PAY for their off season workouts at their spring training site!!?? No class…..
It’s little brother syndrome. Yankee fans taunt and bash the less successful little brother. Even NY media buys into it. Mets fans develop a complex. The Mets are actually a decent franchise in a tough division, but there’s no excuse not to spend a bit more. That’s why fans want and deserve new owners.
Yanks are still upset that the Mets had bigger attendence when they were playing at the Polo Grounds.
2015 for the Mets ……last World Series appearance for the Yuckies was 2009
Good. A-Roid is as low class as you can get. If I were a player I wouldn’t believe anything he says.
How is Darren these days?
They not gonna be able to sell the team without including the network.
Yep!
Is there any such thing as a major league franchise going bankrupt?
I would imagine the league would take ownership of it if it ever came to that, before reselling it to a buyer, similar to what NBA did with the New Orleans Hornets/Pelicans. The Hornets faced a potential threat of leaving New Orleans when the minority owner that was interested in keeping them there was bought out by the majority owner (George Shinn), and ultimately just cared the return.
The Dodgers filed for bankruptcy in 2011, when McCourt owned the team.
Thank you to both RunDMC and Appalachian_Outlaw… I remember both of those events now. ‘Preciate the refresher!
Screw Bud Selig.
isn’t that what happened to the expo/nationals
Frank McCourt, Dodgers owner almost ten years ago…..
Tom hicks/rangers in 09/10
It was, as expected, a publicity stunt, by two people who cannot survive without seeing their name in the papers.
Yeah. That’s not even close. But nice try though.
Its funny most of you here say that the owners make billions and yet the Mets are on the verge of bankruptcy. Maybe you dont know what the heck youre talking about.
A lot of people confuse “make billions” with “have possessions worth billions.” Might be a technicality to some, but there is a difference.
No one ever said the Wilpons were smart with their money. Well really they don’t appear that smart in general.
With ZERO money coming in a lot of teams are facing bankruptcy unless their VERY rich owners put money in. The Wacko Wilpons made some bad investment decisions over ten years ago. Do some basic research gama…..
Gamara, do you know how to use Google? It’s really not difficult. Type the phrase “richest owners in MLB”. The information on how much each owner is worth is very immediately available. More than half the owners are billionaires.
angels owner arte moreno bought the team for $184 mil in 2003. it is worth somewhere around $2 billion. plus whatever he made from profits.
Wow, some people are not thinkers, at all
If you bought a home in some California neighborhoods 30 or so years ago, the homes value could be approaching 1 million dollars. That may make you a millionaire by assets, but you could still be living paycheck to paycheck on a monthly bases.
As Hubcap said, being worth something and having something to spend are two very, very different things.
Owning a franchise almost automatically makes you around a billionaire, but most all would have to sell the team to be able to spend a billion dollars. Apparently some of you light thinking people cant grasp that simple reality
An A-bomb! From A-Rod!
Typical Mets. They can’t even sell the team at a discount.
Not trying to sell at discount
Trying to sell at largest price a team had ever sold for, while keeping the money making TV side, and keeping at minimum some connection/control of the club, all while telling the new owner they will be losing millions annually for years because theyve made such bad decisions (but in reality that should read: played paper games to milk the new owners out of more money in the future)
This isnt a truly serious attempt to sell the club; this is them trying to find a sucker willing to bend over and take it just to be able to call themselves “new owner of the mets”
All deals will continue to fall apart until the Wilpons get serious.
It is like trying to sell a Lamborghini without the engine. Well in this case for the Mets, sell a Hyundai without the engine and wheels and power windows etc etc.
The Mets would find a way to complicate a two-person picnic.
Bails!!
A-Rod is POS guy. He is filthy rich and blessed with God given talent. Hopefully he becomes a better person some day.
Not too sure why the word “bail” is used here. I thought bail is supposed to mean flaking on an agreed upon deal. No deal was ever materialized.
Wait! I didn’t think NYC did “bail” anymore with Sheriff De Blah Blah on the job.
I suspect that A-Rod was looking for a deal that provided maximum ownership for minimal investment – using his name (and J-Lo’s) as currency.
as we speak, the value of this team is dropping.
Good. Should have bailed on those steroids too am I right
Would have been messy when JLo filed for yet another divorce. Investors were probably leery.
The Mets don;t seem to be competently owned. It didn’t take much for A-Rod or anyone else for that matter to figure it out.The Mets are not worth what they are asking.
And to the question a few comments above, yes there have been teams that have gone into bankruptcy and it will happen again as I have said many times. We are on the prepetice of a major advertising revenue fall off and when that happens it will be carnage.
Many sports will lose clubs. Wait for it. It will happen.
Totally agree jimmertee: The new normal that is tossed around means exactly that. All of the arguments that talk about what teams should do will be replaced by pleas for anyone, including even the Wilpon’s, to finance a team. The ramifications of this stoppage, of an economy, will be catastrophic. Just think about how even one person going bankrupt and how many people are effected. Their family, people who they owe money to, places and things they formally spent money on, taxes they formally paid, taxes paid by all the people they purchased things from, governments lower revenue as a result, cut back on government programs and the effect on workers in those programs and on and on. Athletes will have to take much less, try imagining the collateral damage that will cause on the economy. I know I sound like a prophet of doom but reading all of the posts that keep talking like we will soon get back to business as usual is scary in it self. Rather then taking the Wilpon’s apart, and I am no fan of them, I think we should be getting prepared by thinking how each one will conduct their own lives going forward. Wilpon bashing was apart of the past normal but economic survival is the new norm.
Well said.
Thank God the cheater isn’t buying the Mets anymore. He deserves to be banished for life. His sins are far worse than that of Pete Rose. Baseball must become clean again and you must start by deleting all records by cheaters
In reality its probably for the best. The circus sideshow that would have been the Arod/Jlo show running the Mets probably would have ended in disaster. Eventually someone will buy the Mets and save the people of Queens from the Wilpons
The Wilpons are in denial about their situation. They expected to sell a heavily leveraged team that is deeply in debt for 2.6 billion dollars without including it’s chief money making asset? And keep control for 5 years? That kind of business practice reminds me of all the trade suggestions on this site. You know the ones; your team trades us your young Superstar for 3-5 of our worthless spare parts. And they always SWEAR TO GOD that it’s a fair deal and can come up with 100 reasons why. Meanwhile all of us same baseball fans know that the deal is crazy. All the billionaires know the Wilpons are crazy. Trying to sell the team the way they are is like trying to trade a 39yo middle reliever and a backup catcher for Ronald Acuna. It’s not going to happen.
Doubt A-Rod and J-Ho ever had any intention of buying the Mets. Just another ploy of the famous cheater to stay in the spot light.
I’m still just not down with the ARod normalization tour.
Dude was so dirty back in the day and he just skates on all of it. Meanwhile Barry Bonds is in ruins.
The network has to be included for any new owner(s).
Nine figure potential loss in 2020?
Pass.
The Wilpons are completely incompetent and underfunded ownership. The Mets, like the Astros, should have been forced into bankruptcy.
The Wilpons’ idiotic and negligent investment of team funds with Bernie Maddoff. has to go down in history as the dumbest investment move ever.
Still time to force the Mets into bankruptcy this time.
The Wilpons are in no position to dictate terms to bidders/new owners.
If they are serious about selling, and it looks like they are desperate,
then NO WILPONS INVOLVEMENT IN NEW TEAM OWNERSHIP
AND GIVE UP THE SPORTS NETWORK TO NEW TEAM OWNERS.
OR NO DEAL WITH ANY WELL FUNDED INVESTORS.
Any Serious, well funded Investment Group bidding on the Mets will REJECT WILPONS INVOLVMENT IN MANAGEMENT OF THE TEAM GOING FORWARD AND REJECT WILPONS CONTROLLING THE METS TELEVISION RIGHTS…
The Wilpons are completely incompetent and underfunded ownership. The Mets, like the Astros, should have been forced into bankruptcy.
The Wilpons’ idiotic and negligent investment of team funds with Bernie Maddoff. has to go down in history as the dumbest investment move ever.
Still time to force the Mets into bankruptcy this time.
The Wilpons are in no position to dictate terms to bidders/new owners.
If they are serious about selling, and it looks like they are desperate,
then NO WILPONS INVOLVEMENT IN NEW TEAM OWNERSHIP
AND GIVE UP THE SPORTS NETWORK TO NEW TEAM OWNERS.
OR NO DEAL WITH ANY WELL FUNDED INVESTORS.
he’s always been a liar
So, **A*Roids** fails again…wanted to buy the Marlins, but Jeter beat him. Wanted to buy the Mets, and nope.
And this is disappointing to all Braves, Phillies, Nats and Marlins fans. We really and truly wanted **A*Roids** to buy the Mets. They would have been perfect for each other.