Another lengthy excerpt from yet another Must Read, this time from Howard Megdal.
The other point worth making is that the event that likely ends the Wilpon ownership of the Mets isn’t coming on the rounding error that is your ticket purchase. They owe $430 million in principal of a loan against the team, due back in 2014. They owe $450 million in principal of a loan against SNY, due back in 2015. They owe around $600 million, due in $25 million increments every six months, against Citi Field. And they have an unspecified judgment coming against them in the lawsuit filed by Irving Picard, trustee for the Bernie Madoff victims. That’s currently at $386 million, a number that is likely to rise on appeal.
In other words, it isn’t clear that selling out Citi Field from now until 2015 will be remotely close to enough to save them. And they clearly aren’t doing that anytime soon.
And that’s at the heart of why I disagree with Shannon’s piece as well. As I detailed in my forthcoming book, it isn’t that this ownership wants to sell. It’s that it likely doesn’t have any choice.
So the question becomes, what to do in the meantime?
via Thoughts on Ticket Purchasing and the Mets | The LoHud Mets Blog.
