December 13, 2007
Illinois to consider buying Wrigley?
With the Tribune Company set to sell off the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field, the state of Illinois is reportedly in talks to buy the historic ballpark for an undetermined price. The Chicago Tribune says there's no indication how the state would pay for the purchase (which it says could cost "hundreds of millions of dollars"), but speculated that the sale of naming rights might be one way to do it.
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley immediately tore into the rumored deal, saying it would amount to "taxpayers helping out the Cubs ... They've made money every year. It's very profitable and some way, we're supposed to bail them out?"
As far as bailouts go, though, it isn't a matter of who owns the ballpark, but who owns the revenues. If the state were to pay, say, $200 million for Wrigley, and get $20 million a year back in rent from the team, that'd be arguably a good deal. (Leaving aside for the moment whether it would take the stadium off the city tax rolls.) If it paid $200 million and the Cubs said, "Thanks - don't forget to water the ivy," then not so much.
Given that the current Cubs finances are a tangled mess of insider deals between the Tribune-owned team, Tribune-owned ballpark, and Tribune-owned cable company (not to mention Tribune-owned ticket scalpers), it's unlikely any outsiders even know what the lease deal is between the Cubs and their stadium, let alone whether it would remain intact once they were owned by separate entities. Once we know that, then we can have some sense of whether this is a legitimate taxpayer expense, or just making baseball's 5th richest team even richer.
—Neil deMause
Illinois is not going to buy Wrigley. The State's financial budget is in complete disarray, and the biggest concern right now is public transportation issues.
Posted by concealed78 on December 15, 2007 01:42 PM