Oaklandish A’s owner John Fisher, as has been covered here ad infinitum, has gotten himself between a rock and a hard place: He’s burned his bridges in Oakland, his team’s temporary home in Sacramento is not working out well at all, and while he has about $600 million in public cash and tax breaks waiting for him in Las Vegas, that’s still around $1 billion shy of what he needs to build a stadium there so his team doesn’t have to play in a vacant lot. Most of Fisher’s family wealth is tied up in Gap stock, which is not doing great itself, leaving his only assets the A’s themselves — which Fisher has been trying and mostly failing to sell minority shares in — and the San Jose Earthquakes MLS team.
Even if you haven’t already read social media this morning, you probably see where this is going:
San Jose Earthquakes owner John Fisher has hired an investment bank to sell his MLS club, according to multiple people familiar with the billionaire’s plans. An official announcement is expected sometime on Wednesday.
In January, the Earthquakes ranked 20th in Sportico’s MLS team valuations at $600 million.
It is certainly possible that Fisher could sell the Earthquakes, take the $600 million in proceeds (less capital gains taxes on the profits from the $20 million he paid for the team in 2007) and his $600 million in Nevada subsidies and $100 million in Aramark concessions contract money and a $300 million Goldman Sachs loan and use that to hire contractors to build his vaporarmadillo, then hope like hell it doesn’t go over budget and that he doesn’t have to then sell the A’s to pay for his stadium’s gold watch chain. Or he could just be trying to keep enough funding balls in the air to convince MLB not to issue him an ultimatum to sell the team to someone who has an actual place for it to play. Not that MLB seems eager to do so — his fellow owners just put Fisher on their executive committee, after all, which isn’t the kind of thing you do with someone you’re about to drum out of the club — but half of raising money is pretending you already have a financial plan, so maybe there’s a method to Fisher’s madness. Or just madness all the way down, either remains possible! More updates on this once Fisher makes an official announcement later today, maybe.
Ryan Miller paid $600M for Real Salt Lake (and a lot of stuff above and beyond just the team). There seem to be rich folks out there who will buy soccer teams.
Is Fisher going to sell the stadium as well?
Meanwhile, the Rays apparently have an agreement in place for a sale to a North Florida (read: Jacksonville) investor. Remarkably coincidental that these bits of news just happened to pop up within 24 hours of each other.
Jacksonville is the #41 TV market in the US, right behind Vegas (and right ahead of Harrisburg). Not saying a new owner would try to move them there, but wow would it be a bad idea if he did.
Yeah I don’t think that would be the play at all if the sale does happen as reported. If anything, the fact that the prospective buyer has extensive Florida ties might even raise some hopes (sorry) in Tampa/St Pete.
Don’t you see?
By doing exactly what a complete idiot would do every step of the way in this journey (including hiring the founder and exterminator of the Golden Baseball League as his chief strategist), Mr. Fisher has lured us all into thinking he is a complete idiot.
My friends, he has us exactly where he wants us…
Completely unwilling to spend any money to support his portfolio of struggling businesses?
The emperor took off his Gap apparel and no one can advise him the birthday suit is ill fitting.
Eventually everyone tips their cards , and he’s doing so in a sea of card sharks… Vegas.
I could frankly see the Earthquakes going for more than $600m. The team that created San Diego FC still had to spend a lot more beyond the $600m to get their team off the ground and they presumably were good with that – an Earthquakes purchase would cover everything needed for play.
Forbes only pegs the team at $540m, but we all know how much rich assholes love to buy sports teams and the Bay Area has an abnormal number of rich assholes. In a rich, relatively international market like the Bay Area the MLS has a lot more potential than most other U.S. cities.
The thing with MLS though is you don’t really own a team, you own shares of MLS. It’s a bizarro league wide ownership structure. He probably still gets his money, but it’s just cuz he sold it to another dum dum
Fisher selling the Earthquakes means I can maybe, possibly revive my previous Earthquakes fandom (former A’s fan here). **watches as he sells to the Saudi Wealth Fund**
The Saudi wealth fund would just buy all of MLS. The “owners” of MLS teams don’t actually own a franchise, they own shares of MLS.
This didn’t take long – San Jose mayor Matt Mahan is angling to build the Earthquakes a new stadium – just ~ 5 miles from their current site- next to the Shark tank by Diridon station (where once the A’s were not able to seal the deal) … https://myemail.constantcontact.com/A-Message-from-Mayor-Matt.html?soid=1140225190588&aid=SiRmpH0Xt7k