When a Sale Is Not a Sale

For those of you who care -- and, apparently many in the market I work in (Atlanta) do care -- the sale of the Atlanta Braves has finally been agreed upon. Forgive my narcissism about this, but the negotiating has been going on for over a year and half…ever since the mega-conglomerate Time Warner decided they wanted to sell.

Is This Significant?

Uh...yeah, in a way, it is significant. If agreed upon by the Gods of Major League Baseball…it would represent the first time that no cash was involved in the sale of one of their teams.

To try and boil this down, Time Warner is essentially trading the team to Liberty Media for mostly Stock Options. They are doing this, surprise, because they can get out of paying taxes on the transaction this way.Gosh, I would hate for companies whose profits are oh…in the Billions, to avoid paying a little tax money to Uncle Sam. But, nowadays if you are mega-rich…you can get away with it.

The catch to all this is MLB’s approval. It probably will happen, but it isn’t a sure thing. One thing that Baseball and most of the other Pro Sports teams encourage is local ownership. This ain’t local ownership. Liberty is based out of Colorado…oh…a thousand miles or so from Atlanta. The other caveat is…and this is just my opinion…Liberty will sell the Braves in oh…2 or 3 years. They will sell it for cash…all cash that they pocket.

Will it affect the team?

No, it won’t. Actually, it will pretty much be status quo for the Braves. They won’t be able to spend much, if anything more than they do now on payroll. They will get to keep current management. And, more importantly, still won’t be able to keep up with the rest of the “Big Boys” in baseball.

Don’t get me wrong; I still despise the idea of escalating salaries in Pro Sports. However, it’s pretty much now a fact of life. Teams will over-pay more and more for players and will pass those costs off to you and me. Liberty Media won’t dig deeper into their pockets for it…they don’t have to.

--Phil Cantor

“The Time has Come, my song is over, thought I’d something more to say...” Time (Pink Floyd)