Who Buys the Mets?

[Centerfield]

Lay your bets down now!!!!

[Benjamin Grimm]

I voted Cohen for less.

[Frayed Knot]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I voted Cohen for less.

I'll go with Paul Lynde to block.

[kcmets]

I took 'til death do us part (aka kill us now)...

[seawolf17]

I think it's still Cohen too, for less.

[Centerfield]

=seawolf17 post_id=31733 time=1581710899 user_id=91]
I think it's still Cohen too, for less.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

I'm going with an Arod-Cohen Consortium

[MFS62]

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: I'm going with an Arod-Cohen Consortium

Yep. I voted Cohen for more, with A-Rod as a major partner.

Later

[Edgy MD]

Dean Kamen.

[Lefty Specialist]

Mark Cuban, for less.

[Guest 41Forever]

Edgy MD wrote: Dean Kamen.

This would be cool! I actually had the opportunity to meet Mr. Kamen and work with him through FIRST Robotics in my prior job. I didn't realize he was a Long Islander.



Pitchers could ride in from the bullpen on Segways!

[HahnSolo]

Cohen for more. He'll get a larger % of the team, and the Wilpons won't stick around.

[Edgy MD]

I'm all for a Dean Kamen takeover, but nothing about Segways are cool.

[Frayed Knot]

A few highlights from the https://nypost.com/2020/02/19/unrelenting-steve-cohen-lingers-over-mets-sale-wants-sny/Cohen not going away file:



- The Wilpons own 65 percent of the cable network in partnership with Spectrum and Comcast. Banking sources tell The Post the network is valued between $850 million-$1 billion, with gross earnings near $150 million annually. Considering the Mets are thought to lose $50 million in an average year, the network would be hugely useful in any sale of the organization.



- “Cohen wants SNY, and he wants it at fair value,” one banker familiar with the deal said. “The team loses $50 million a year in a good year, so he wants SNY's revenue, and he might pay a small premium to never have to deal with Fred and Jeff ever again.”



- “They [the Wilpons] clearly don't want to sell to Steve Cohen,” one former Mets employee said. “But who is going to come close to paying what he will?” ... sources say [any new Cohen] offer might not be much higher than the $2.6 billion he offered without SNY and with the five-year window in place. Those sources also tell The Post that Cohen is increasingly certain no bid will come close, even with SNY in the mix.



- the specter of Cohen is said to be keeping other billionaires on the sidelines ... “He's definitely still out there,” one person following both the process and Cohen said. “But if no one else is [ready to show interest] because they're afraid he's going to blow out their offer, this thing might last forever.”

[batmagadanleadoff]

I read that piece about an hour ago. If Cohen's willing to offer more or less the same $2.6B he offered a few months ago, but this time around, with SNY included, and this time around, taking control of the Mets immediately, as soon as the money changes hands - take a hike, eff 'n Jeff as soon as you take Cohen's money - AND on top of that, Cohen doesn't expect anybody else to come close to this latest offer -------- then boy oh boy, did Cohen offer to over-pay a few months ago, Cohen's now realizing.

Edited February 19, 2020 by Guest

[Edgy MD]

Presumably, with the same principals owning the Mets and SNY, the network gets something like a sweet deal on the rights to broadcast Mets games. I imagine any new owners of the Mets, if they cannot acquire the network at the same time, would insist on something like a market-level rate for those rights.



And are those rights to signed over to SNY in perpetuity? Because if they aren't, the new team owner would have the network owners over a barrel. The channel isn't worth much without its flagship programming. So I see whereas both sides would be in a precarious situation.



Oddly enough, it had previously been that having been handcuffed into a cable deal that was declining in value hastened the organization's decline in the 1990s.

[Centerfield]

Edgy MD wrote: Presumably, with the same principals owning the Mets and SNY, the network gets something like a sweet deal on the rights to broadcast Mets games. I imagine any new owners of the Mets, if they cannot acquire the network at the same time, would insist on something like a market-level rate for those rights. And are those rights signed over to SNY in perpetuity? Because if they aren't, the new team owner would have the network owners over a barrel. The channel isn't worth much without its flagship programming. So I see whereas both sides would be in a precarious situation. Oddly enough, it had previously been that having been handcuffed into a cable deal that was declining in value hastened the organization's decline in the 1990s.

Funny right? Sterling Doubleday Enterprises often cited that TV deal as the reason they couldn't spend like the Yankees, and once SNY launched, the Wilpons claimed that their revenues would put them on even footing with the team across town. To their credit, they did have one of the top payrolls in baseball for a while until Madoff.



If the original deal went forward, they would have been on the beneficial side of a long-term, undermarket TV deal.

[Vic Sage]

Cohen doesn't necessarily need to own SNY, he just needs the Mets broadcasting rights. So if the current Mets/SNY deal is terminable, he absolutely can get the revenues back from a new deal (either with SNY or perhaps YES?, or even another regional network) that he would otherwise get from owning SNY. So if the deal is terminable and SNY has to either pay market rate (plus perhaps even a premium from losing the broadcast rights to a competitor like YES), then SNY won't be particularly valuable to Fred&Jeffie anymore, so they might as well toss it into the deal and go back to real estate.



It all comes down to the nature of the current Mets/SNY deal.

[vtmet7]

I voted Wilpons will never sell...mostly because I would like to be proven wrong