Well, there has to be a buyer to sell to. If there is no season, and the future is in doubt, the value of the club will drop a shitload, one would think. Any owner wanting to sell will have to wait until shit is back up and running full bore, or take a massively lower price for their club than they would have gotten if they sold in January, 2020.
Neither of those things have anything to do with the other. MLS is not the Bundesliga, and America is not Germany. Different countries, different customs and cultures, different stages of the virus, different calendars in which they play their seasons and different stages of progress in their current seasons. The decision for MLS to cancel its season now may be premature, but if it is, it has nothing to do with what they’re doing in Germany.
Washington State closing a field hospital, which is a good sign that they no longer expect to hit their worst case scenarios.
In reality, no. The value of a franchise will always be dependent on future income. Current owners will take a major cash flow hit now but, assuming we get back to a point where we can fill stadiums again, the values should be unchanged. It's possible we may have some liabilities after we return, such as owing the network another season at the current rate, but I dont see that as likely.
DC United, for starters. I don’t think Arthur Blank owns anything other than majority sports stuff these days. Of course $5B is with a lot more than whatever the DCU owners have. Thx, Jay!
Isn’t most of Kraft’s networth related to the Patriots? And even tho he’s married to a Walton, I’d be curious how much of Kroenke’s wealth is in the multitude of teams he owns.. With the departure of Joe Roth and death of Paul Allen, I’m not sure how much money is actually available to the Sounders now that they’ve been cut-off from their game day revenue.
If I were Kaplan and Levien I'd be more worried about Swansea's $30 million payroll. MLS can cancel the season and implement a shorter one to stay at a later date.
He made a ton of money pre-sports teams (and pre-marriage) by essentially being the realtor to sell all the building pads in Wal-Mart parking lots.
Yes! Cancel that horrible 1-0 home opener loss to Vancouver. Never happened! Fresh start, short season.
“Until we have significant amounts of fast testing that is not bypassing those people who really need the fast testing, I don’t see a path to having sport” ~ Sounders FC majority owner Adrian Hanauer. More: https://t.co/06wyZEB58i pic.twitter.com/cOfjEfgAah— Jayda Evans (@JaydaEvans) April 9, 2020
If MLS does cancel the season, it won't be because they can't complete an abbreviated season, but rather the league taking a calculated risk to protect itself. First, any sports that do come back this year will most likely have to play in empty arenas. Since MLS relies on ticket sales as a percentage of revenue much more than other leagues, postponing the league just to play in empty stadiums might not be financially feasible. Secondly, when sports do come back, it could mean MLS competing against the NBA and NHL playoffs, football, and other soccer leagues possibly all at the same time. That would obviously negatively affect viewership at a time when MLS can't afford to show weakness in TV ratings with a new TV deal still to be negotiated. MLS needs strong TV numbers more than ever because ESPN as the front runner for that deal probably won't be in any mood for generosity considering it was losing subscribers faster than ever in February, and that was before all the postponements. Lastly, MLS would be affected by the international windows that were already planned for the remainder of the year, which would further cause disruptions that other sports leagues wouldn't have to worry about.
So looks like it's really happening - sports (in the form of MMA) are returning to the United States on April 18. It seems Dana White has secured a hotel in central California on a Native American reservation that does not have to follow California gathering restrictions. He says he has control of the venue for two months and has a deal with a trauma hospital in Fresno to treat fighters if needed. Presumably, after these two months, either some place in the United States will have eased restrictions allowing him to hold events, or he will hold events on the much talked about private island, though I don't know how he will be able to guarantee a hospital on a private island... I am guessing the island thing is bullshit, but the reservation events really will happen.
Some of them are paid by the league. I haven't done the exact math but my favourite team probably spends as much or more of its own money (DPs, optional TAM) as the league does.
Not sure if it was posted here or not, but on the good news front, Seattle has deconstructed the field hospital at CenturyLink. (we still think we're a week away from our surge here in Chicago. Hospital capacity seems to be doing ok, but anxiety is high).
Lamar Hunt or Lamar Hunt and Family never appeared on the Forbes list of billionaires. This was true even when HSG owned 100% of the Kansas City Chiefs (Forbes value at the time $800million), 3/10ths of Major League Soccer, a chunk of the Chicago Bulls, and various sports and non-sports real estate holdings. The Hunt that did appear on the Forbes list was from the other side of the family and did not include any of Lamar's holdings.
Wealth does not mean cash, otherwise the Jeff Cooper AC Saint Louis MLS team would probably be celebrating it's tenth season. I worked for a soccer company in the mid-90s that was highly profitable, but ended up having to sell itself to another mail order retailer because its negative cash flow meant that it couldn't meet its then current financial obligations. There are plenty of obscenely wealthy people that are basically living "paycheck to paycheck". It's why people that earn a quarter million a year consider themselves to be "middle class" despite being more than two standard deviations from mean. Owning a company worth $2B is great, but it doesn't mean you have cash. Kraft probably doesn't want to sell a portion of it to pay the Patriots/Revs payroll, and he may not want to use it as collateral to take out a loan, either.
Kroenke, and no doubt. But it does show that he's not solely reliant/invested in his sports teams and his wife's money.