Your entire life you’ve grown up knowing that you would one day own the Mets. Some day son all this will be yours.
A man of similar age comes in. Some people use words like “shark” to describe him. He’s a gambler and has made his money off sensing which companies were about to fall apart.
But Dad needs some money, so you welcome him in your business. Well, Dad’s business but someday yours. After all, it is your birthright to own this team.
The gambler isn’t shy. He doesn’t seem to be the silent partner type. Maybe he won’t think you’ve earned your place to be the Chief Operating Officer? Maybe he can’t do anything about it, but he wont have to like it and won’t have to be nice about it in meetings.
Do you think these two will get along?
…
The Times quotes as unidentified “sports banker” as saying
Rule No. 1 is you never have a press conference unless you have a deal signed,” said a banker who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to affect the business he does with the Mets. “Now Einhorn owns them because they have to do the deal.”
I don’t think it will matter. I think as I always did that this first stage of a sale is simply the first phase of the Wilpons soft landing. Bud Selig is orchestrating a soft landing and in return gets an ownership transition that he and the other owners will find pleasing to them.
Right now the Wilpons retain saved face, and then over the course of the next two to three years they will talk of being weary of the duties of owning a team, yada yada yada, and Einhorn will bring in additional investors. Perhaps he will be the majority owner, perhaps not. Either way Jeff Wilpon ends up with a courtesy luxury box and a remaining lifetime of what if.
Jeff Wilpon did it to himself.
Yes, Fred was the one who got the family’s money all tied up with Madoff, but Jeff was in charge of running the team. Even if the family lost most of their operating capital, there was no reason that Jeff couldn’t put a product on the field that would attract fans in enough numbers to keep the team running at a positive cash flow. As long as the product on the field was good, game day revenue, plus licensing revenue, plus TV revenue would exceed operating costs, and the team would be printing money.
If the team is really losing the kind of money Fred says it is, that’s completely independent of Madoff, and has everything to do with the product on the field. If the Mets had been consistently contending since 2006, they’d be making money hand over fist — even with a high payroll and no working capital.
They say that there is only one guaranteed way to make a small fortune: start with a large fortune. Jeff Wilpon has proven adept at turning a large fortune into a small fortune. He deserves everything he gets…