MLB set to take over Texas Rangers (1 Viewer)

[culdeus]

Selig to seize Rangers; creditors to force team into bankruptcy

Mon May 10,2010 8:15 AM ETBy Craig Calcaterra

What was merely suggested a week ago now appears all but certain. In response to Major League Baseball's warning that it was going to seize the Texas Rangers from Tom Hicks and invalidate the debt that held by the creditors to Hicks Sports Group, the creditors have voted to reject the deal, reports Daniel Kaplan of Sports Business Journal.

The result of this is that when baseball makes its move -- which should happen following the owners' meeting scheduled for later this week -- the creditors will sue, forcing the Rangers into bankruptcy court and potentially opening the sale up for other bidders. It would be up to a bankruptcy judge to determine whether that comes to pass or, alternatively, if Selig is within his powers to kick the creditors to the curb.

Which seems like a lose-lose for baseball.

If the creditors prevail it quite obviously delays the sale of the team and possibly takes Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan out of the owners' suite in favor of a higher biddder, should one emerge. This is clearly not what Selig wanted, inasmuch as everyone seems pretty pleased with the Greenberg/Ryan team.

But say baseball wins the battle, is able to shrug the liens off the Rangers, and pays them a pittance to go away, thereby paving the way for the sale. If that happens, isn't every bank and investment fund who ever considered lending money to a sports team going to freak out? Why on Earth would any of them give money to a sports team if they have good reason to believe that the debtor could simply refuse to pay up and then have the league come in and invalidate the debt in the first place?

Sure, there's a lot to be said for team owners being forced to operate within their budgets and not rely on so much debt. I've said plenty on the subject in the past. But I don't think most team owners agree with me on that score, and they can't be all too happy about the prospect of having all sources of credit dry up.

This thing has been going on in the background for some time. This should be big news, and widely discussed but it isn't. If owners can no longer rely on asset and brand value to leverage the day-to-day operations of a club then you could see massive slashes in budgets and other major implications.

Forcing these creditors to beg, borrow, steal to get what they have invested in MLB back makes Selig look more like a crony panderer than ever before.

What if these I-Bankers just totally pull out? Tons of sports teams are mortgaged in excess of FMV right now.

One solution would be to allow sports teams to be run like a publicly traded stock, but that would cut down on the good old boy network, and is only a dream right now.

 

[Smack Tripper]

Selig to seize Rangers; creditors to force team into bankruptcy

Mon May 10,2010 8:15 AM ETBy Craig Calcaterra

What was merely suggested a week ago now appears all but certain. In response to Major League Baseball's warning that it was going to seize the Texas Rangers from Tom Hicks and invalidate the debt that held by the creditors to Hicks Sports Group, the creditors have voted to reject the deal, reports Daniel Kaplan of Sports Business Journal.

The result of this is that when baseball makes its move -- which should happen following the owners' meeting scheduled for later this week -- the creditors will sue, forcing the Rangers into bankruptcy court and potentially opening the sale up for other bidders. It would be up to a bankruptcy judge to determine whether that comes to pass or, alternatively, if Selig is within his powers to kick the creditors to the curb.

Which seems like a lose-lose for baseball.

If the creditors prevail it quite obviously delays the sale of the team and possibly takes Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan out of the owners' suite in favor of a higher biddder, should one emerge. This is clearly not what Selig wanted, inasmuch as everyone seems pretty pleased with the Greenberg/Ryan team.

But say baseball wins the battle, is able to shrug the liens off the Rangers, and pays them a pittance to go away, thereby paving the way for the sale. If that happens, isn't every bank and investment fund who ever considered lending money to a sports team going to freak out? Why on Earth would any of them give money to a sports team if they have good reason to believe that the debtor could simply refuse to pay up and then have the league come in and invalidate the debt in the first place?

Sure, there's a lot to be said for team owners being forced to operate within their budgets and not rely on so much debt. I've said plenty on the subject in the past. But I don't think most team owners agree with me on that score, and they can't be all too happy about the prospect of having all sources of credit dry up.

This thing has been going on in the background for some time. This should be big news, and widely discussed but it isn't. If owners can no longer rely on asset and brand value to leverage the day-to-day operations of a club then you could see massive slashes in budgets and other major implications.

Forcing these creditors to beg, borrow, steal to get what they have invested in MLB back makes Selig look more like a crony panderer than ever before.

What if these I-Bankers just totally pull out? Tons of sports teams are mortgaged in excess of FMV right now.

One solution would be to allow sports teams to be run like a publicly traded stock, but that would cut down on the good old boy network, and is only a dream right now.

I don't even see how this is possible, but ownership approval has always been strange to me. You take a guy like Mark Cuban, who has wanted to get in the MLB game for a while, and you tell him his money is no good while a team in the city he operates in goes bankrupt?

 

[Dr. Awesome]

I don't even see how this is possible, but ownership approval has always been strange to me. You take a guy like Mark Cuban, who has wanted to get in the MLB game for a while, and you tell him his money is no good while a team in the city he operates in goes bankrupt?

:X

 

[Doctor Detroit]

8th biggest TV market, great stadium, and a decent fan following that has the potential to be great if they were really good. This ain't the Expos.

 

[culdeus]

8th biggest TV market, great stadium, and a decent fan following that has the potential to be great if they were really good. This ain't the Expos.

They built and planned the stadium at the wrong timeframe in the wrong city. The population center moved North and East of Dallas at almost the same time they built the thing.For those that are unaware of the geography Arlington sits roughly 25 miles from downtown Dallas and 15 miles from downtown Fort Worth. When it was built the "center of gravity" of the metroplex was located roughly 10 miles east and 20 miles north of the new stadium. Now this gravity has shifted another 10 miles east and another 10 miles north. And this is not showing any signs of slowing. The attendance would be much stronger in downtown dallas, but I don't see that happening unless an NL team moved there. Tickets to the games are now basically free to any large organization. They just had an open offer here for 24 tickets in the 2nd deck for 40 dollars and that came with 6 parking passes. The parking passes alone were worth 60 bucks face. Granted, these were for the upcoming weeknight stretch and mid-day games, but it shows just how little gate they are able to generate right now. And this is not a horrible team either, but that's not gonna get it done. It's just such a PITA to get to the stadium. It's ####### hot in the summer to go to a game, and the product just doesn't have the name recognition anymore.

 

[Doctor Detroit]

8th biggest TV market, great stadium, and a decent fan following that has the potential to be great if they were really good. This ain't the Expos.

They built and planned the stadium at the wrong timeframe in the wrong city. The population center moved North and East of Dallas at almost the same time they built the thing.

For those that are unaware of the geography Arlington sits roughly 25 miles from downtown Dallas and 15 miles from downtown Fort Worth. When it was built the "center of gravity" of the metroplex was located roughly 10 miles east and 20 miles north of the new stadium. Now this gravity has shifted another 10 miles east and another 10 miles north. And this is not showing any signs of slowing. The attendance would be much stronger in downtown dallas, but I don't see that happening unless an NL team moved there.

Tickets to the games are now basically free to any large organization. They just had an open offer here for 24 tickets in the 2nd deck for 40 dollars and that came with 6 parking passes. The parking passes alone were worth 60 bucks face. Granted, these were for the upcoming weeknight stretch and mid-day games, but it shows just how little gate they are able to generate right now.

And this is not a horrible team either, but that's not gonna get it done. It's just such a PITA to get to the stadium. It's ####### hot in the summer to go to a game, and the product just doesn't have the name recognition anymore.

Most MLB stadiums are a pain to get to. If they are downtown you are gonna fight traffic going in. If they are in the suburbs, they aren't always going to be near your house.

 

[Leroy Hoard]

Where's GWB when you need him?

 

[culdeus]

8th biggest TV market, great stadium, and a decent fan following that has the potential to be great if they were really good. This ain't the Expos.

They built and planned the stadium at the wrong timeframe in the wrong city. The population center moved North and East of Dallas at almost the same time they built the thing.

For those that are unaware of the geography Arlington sits roughly 25 miles from downtown Dallas and 15 miles from downtown Fort Worth. When it was built the "center of gravity" of the metroplex was located roughly 10 miles east and 20 miles north of the new stadium. Now this gravity has shifted another 10 miles east and another 10 miles north. And this is not showing any signs of slowing. The attendance would be much stronger in downtown dallas, but I don't see that happening unless an NL team moved there.

Tickets to the games are now basically free to any large organization. They just had an open offer here for 24 tickets in the 2nd deck for 40 dollars and that came with 6 parking passes. The parking passes alone were worth 60 bucks face. Granted, these were for the upcoming weeknight stretch and mid-day games, but it shows just how little gate they are able to generate right now.

And this is not a horrible team either, but that's not gonna get it done. It's just such a PITA to get to the stadium. It's ####### hot in the summer to go to a game, and the product just doesn't have the name recognition anymore.

Most MLB stadiums are a pain to get to. If they are downtown you are gonna fight traffic going in. If they are in the suburbs, they aren't always going to be near your house.

Fine, but don't expect this thing to get Boston level attendance in it's current spot regardless of win %. Weeknight baseball best case is 20k. In town it would have been more. There's no doubt of this. Each year MLB gifts the rangers a few sellouts with NY and BOS mid-week, but that's it. Any other sellouts are a result of a concert appearance by some jesus band or country performer.

 

[Doctor Detroit]

8th biggest TV market, great stadium, and a decent fan following that has the potential to be great if they were really good. This ain't the Expos.

They built and planned the stadium at the wrong timeframe in the wrong city. The population center moved North and East of Dallas at almost the same time they built the thing.

For those that are unaware of the geography Arlington sits roughly 25 miles from downtown Dallas and 15 miles from downtown Fort Worth. When it was built the "center of gravity" of the metroplex was located roughly 10 miles east and 20 miles north of the new stadium. Now this gravity has shifted another 10 miles east and another 10 miles north. And this is not showing any signs of slowing. The attendance would be much stronger in downtown dallas, but I don't see that happening unless an NL team moved there.

Tickets to the games are now basically free to any large organization. They just had an open offer here for 24 tickets in the 2nd deck for 40 dollars and that came with 6 parking passes. The parking passes alone were worth 60 bucks face. Granted, these were for the upcoming weeknight stretch and mid-day games, but it shows just how little gate they are able to generate right now.

And this is not a horrible team either, but that's not gonna get it done. It's just such a PITA to get to the stadium. It's ####### hot in the summer to go to a game, and the product just doesn't have the name recognition anymore.

Most MLB stadiums are a pain to get to. If they are downtown you are gonna fight traffic going in. If they are in the suburbs, they aren't always going to be near your house.

Fine, but don't expect this thing to get Boston level attendance in it's current spot regardless of win %. Weeknight baseball best case is 20k. In town it would have been more. There's no doubt of this. Each year MLB gifts the rangers a few sellouts with NY and BOS mid-week, but that's it. Any other sellouts are a result of a concert appearance by some jesus band or country performer.

Well they are averaging 26k a game this year and the game I was at had 45k. last year they averaged 27.6k which is fine for Dallas/Fort Worth. If they get 20k on weeknights and 30k+ for the weekend games, that is enough revenue stream. If they are good which it looks like is the case, attendence will go up as long as they are in playoff contention. If they ever win a playoff series this market could explode, Dallas fans are pretty good about following their teams (see Stars).

 

[Eephus]

The Rangers have been slightly below the mean according to Forbes' team revenue and franchise valuation statistics. The only table where they're an outlier is in debt/value ratio, which seems like more of an indictment of Hicks' mismanagement than anything inherently wrong with the stadium, fans or market.

 

[culdeus]

8th biggest TV market, great stadium, and a decent fan following that has the potential to be great if they were really good. This ain't the Expos.

They built and planned the stadium at the wrong timeframe in the wrong city. The population center moved North and East of Dallas at almost the same time they built the thing.

For those that are unaware of the geography Arlington sits roughly 25 miles from downtown Dallas and 15 miles from downtown Fort Worth. When it was built the "center of gravity" of the metroplex was located roughly 10 miles east and 20 miles north of the new stadium. Now this gravity has shifted another 10 miles east and another 10 miles north. And this is not showing any signs of slowing. The attendance would be much stronger in downtown dallas, but I don't see that happening unless an NL team moved there.

Tickets to the games are now basically free to any large organization. They just had an open offer here for 24 tickets in the 2nd deck for 40 dollars and that came with 6 parking passes. The parking passes alone were worth 60 bucks face. Granted, these were for the upcoming weeknight stretch and mid-day games, but it shows just how little gate they are able to generate right now.

And this is not a horrible team either, but that's not gonna get it done. It's just such a PITA to get to the stadium. It's ####### hot in the summer to go to a game, and the product just doesn't have the name recognition anymore.

Most MLB stadiums are a pain to get to. If they are downtown you are gonna fight traffic going in. If they are in the suburbs, they aren't always going to be near your house.

Fine, but don't expect this thing to get Boston level attendance in it's current spot regardless of win %. Weeknight baseball best case is 20k. In town it would have been more. There's no doubt of this. Each year MLB gifts the rangers a few sellouts with NY and BOS mid-week, but that's it. Any other sellouts are a result of a concert appearance by some jesus band or country performer.

Well they are averaging 26k a game this year and the game I was at had 45k. last year they averaged 27.6k which is fine for Dallas/Fort Worth. If they get 20k on weeknights and 30k+ for the weekend games, that is enough revenue stream. If they are good which it looks like is the case, attendence will go up as long as they are in playoff contention. If they ever win a playoff series this market could explode, Dallas fans are pretty good about following their teams (see Stars).

Nobody buys those numbers. I have no idea how they pull those out of their ### like that and expect anyone to believe it, or what ends it serves to be so dishonest. I think they count all tickets sold in that number, many of which are being basically given away for free. They do have a sweetheart deal from the TV outlet here as a result of the lack of cable TV penetration in DFW.