Cubs sale: the mobile finish line
It’s hard to believe, but the Cubs sale is moving toward a conclusion. In today’s Tribune Ameet Sachdev tells us the Trib is in the process of taking the final bids.
Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Cubs as well as the Chicago Tribune, was pushing prospective buyers to submit their final bids for the team, Wrigley Field and related assets by the end of last week. But the media company was flexible with the deadline, said people familiar with the discussions.
As one source said Monday, “In an auction you are always given the opportunity to improve your bid one last time.”
Yet the finish line remains near. The last-minute jockeying likely will delay the selection of a winning bid by a few days, sources said.
According to Sachdev the Tribune is trying to cross all of the t’s and dot all of the i’s so this thing doesn’t wind up in the hands of the bankruptcy legal proceedings.
While Tribune Co. did not include the Cubs in its bankruptcy petition, that doesn’t mean the legal proceedings will not influence the sale. Creditors and the judge want to make sure there has been a fair sales process that maximizes the proceeds for the bankrupt estate, said Douglas Baird, a corporate restructuring specialist at the University of Chicago Law School.
The last thing Tribune Co. wants is for a prominent creditor to object to the sales process and attempt to reopen the Cubs auction in bankruptcy court, sources said. The company declined to comment.
Remember all of the tax games Zell wanted to play with the sale? Well much of that is out of the picture. Following the financial crash of 2008, cash is king. That’s the case with the Cubs sale where the Tribune now wants cash:
With tax savings in mind, Tribune Co. considered taking some non-cash considerations from a buyer that would pay out over time. In bankruptcy, the company is more conscious of getting as much cash upfront as possible, sources said.
“My impression is that creditors are now much more focused on cash, even if it’s not as tax efficient,” said a person close to one of the bidders who did not want to be identified because the sales process is ongoing.
This is good for a prospective buyer who will now get more equity in the team and won’t be burdened with the debt that Zell wanted to give them as part of the sale.
Sachdev spoke with WGN Radio’s David Kaplan on Sports Central about the Cubs sale last night. They spoke alot about the resumes of the three finalists. Sachdev thought that all three finalists could get through MLB’s approval process. Kaplan said that his sources saw this as a two horse race with Ricketts and Klaff. According to Kaplan, Utay’s group was calling around looking for more cash on Friday. Ricketts still had a slight advantage according to Kaplan. Sachdev said that the Tribune is keeping all creditors and the judge informed on all moves at this point, trying to avoid having any issues after the auction has concluded.
So, if all goes according to plan, we will have a real good idea who the new owner will be very soon.
“In an auction you are always given the opportunity to improve your bid one last time.”
hmmmm… really?
seems to me we’re being asked to believe that — in the midst of the biggest cash crunch since the 1930s, with everyone everywhere divesting property as fast as possible, often at fire sale prices, in an effort to raise cash — some sort of bidding war has broken out over a ballclub.
really?
color me skeptical. this might be a minority probability, and could be that things go just fine from here… but then absolutely fucking nothing about this sale has gone “just fine” for the last two years. something just possibly could be amiss with the process.
if i might speculate — perhaps either they don’t have any firm bids (ie, replete with financing contingencies that may be unrealistic or unattractive) — or perhaps the bids are so low that tribco’s creditors are considering rejecting them. just speculating, of course. hopefully i’m wrong.
gaius marius
January 13, 2009 at 9:08 am
LMAO. You got it gm, from the corporate mouthpiece itself.
“just fine” at this point would be like a hole in one on a Par 5. I would say par on anything involving the Cubs sale is: ‘clusterfuck’.
wpbc
January 13, 2009 at 9:45 am
gm, what I am reading and hearing is that the deal will be between $800 and $950 million. (Think they wish they’d taken the $1.3 billion offer from Cuban last summer…now?) Ricketts and his family are the favorites and have been for quite some time. They have the dollars to compete with any of the finalists and they are attempting to buy this team without outside investors, that is appealing to MLB.
wpbc
January 13, 2009 at 9:51 am
remember when MLB and the rest of the crowd thought this sale would be done well in advance of the 2008 season? LOL
“just a speed bump” — right. remind me, ccd — why does anyone believe anything that baseball, tribco or the cubs say?
gaius marius
January 13, 2009 at 9:53 am
fwiw, i wouldn’t believe anyone’s guess about the deal size anymore, ccd — although, for the team, the park and the cable network that could be in the ballpark. hard to imagine the team itself being worth as much as $600mm, particularly now. $800mm for the box lot? may be. but, as much as these things used to be predictable, the changes in the financial environment make just getting a financed deal done at any price prohibitive. the size could be anything.
gaius marius
January 13, 2009 at 10:03 am
people want to imagine that baseball and the cubs are above the fray and corruption of everyday life gm. despite evidence to the contrary dating back to the first ballgames ever played, baseball somehow someway has sold an idea of honesty and purity to the fans. despite all of the scandals and corruption in the game, many fans still want to believe what baseball higher ups say. funny isn’t it?
wpbc
January 13, 2009 at 10:06 am
fair enough.
It just shows you how businessmen, like Zell, were great when times were good. But he doesn’t have a fucking midas touch. They could have sold this thing before October 2008 and been in nice shape. But the inability of TribCo to work the sale fast…it reeks of TribCo under FitzSimons and Grenesko…was not something I thought we would see from Zell. Remember how long it took these guys to put their fucking book together last winter and spring? If Zell had moved this thing fast like he said he intended to do in April 2007 none of this would be a problem. But Zell wanted to get every last nickel and tax cheating scam out of this thing. So instead of jumping at an offer that was over twice the actual value of the franchise, ballpark and share in the tv network he tried to get more. Well sometimes you get what might be long overdue.
wpbc
January 13, 2009 at 10:08 am
if it doesn’t have a use as fantasy, ccd, what use does it have?
yellon always irritated me because he is SO deep into the fantasy world that he’s lost contact to some degree with the real one — so much so that he can’t see how the real world interacts with and affects his fantasy world, and because of that participates in all manner of self-defeat and self-negation on false premises.
but it’s less that he specifically has fallen into that trap which i find irritating than that he represents the multitude of the trapped, the self-negating, the self-defeating.
it really is not healthy to be a dedicated fantasist, i guess is the final analysis, unless you like to be exploited.
gaius marius
January 13, 2009 at 11:17 am
addressing my own quote — so sad — but this is at the heart of what is wrong socially with sport-as-business.
sport as a vehicle for mimesis and as a morality play (eg a bullfight) is one thing — it teaches ordinary people about the real world in a way that a school cannot, but without having to experience and inflict real loss as a result of real errors. sport once had a civilizing mission.
sport (and entertainment generally) as a profit center, however, relies in the end on blurring the line between the real world and the fantasy world — encouraging immersion into the gratuitous fantasy and obliterating a divorced real world application of lessons learned. the interest is merely in holding attention long enough and often enough to facilitate a wealth transfer. eventually obliterating the moral lesson altogether in favor of appealing to the animal instinct proves most reliably profitable, which is why sport is nowadays never sold for its civilizing effect but rather its animal release — choose sex (caution: shit music) or violence, then drool. no accident that MLB’s starving franchise is the one that introduced this travesty in front of an empty house.
it’s hard for me to decide whether to excoriate disconnected fantasists or pity their plight. i end up doing both.
gaius marius
January 13, 2009 at 11:37 am
I have no problem with fans using sport as an escape from their reality for a period of time. somewhere there is a moment where that escape becomes to big a leap imho where fans go off the deep end. into the fantasy that you discuss.
i think if you want to be an informed fan, and i completely understand the ‘drive-by fan’ that just has a casual interest, you have to look at the world that surrounds sport and is sport. if you want to be some form of super-fan like the guy you discuss above, you owe it to yourself and to your readers to understand the context that things are happening in. it amazes me how little they discuss the cubs sale over there. at many times it’s like the whole process doesn’t exist. they can bury their head in the sand, but mother tribune is in deep deep shit. the best thing that could have happened to the cubs before any of the tribs issues was to get away from their corporate ownership. now it’s important if you want to see the franchise survive. imho this is the biggest story that has surrounded the Cubs since the Wrigley family sold them to the Tribsters in 1981. for the most part it has been ignored over there, because the guy has his head buried in the sand trying to recall an obscure outfielder on the 1962 team. have at it partner, if that’s the type of super-fan you wanna be. it ain’t for my tastes.
one would have to be an idiot to think that the changes coming with the sale (or non-sale) wouldn’t impact the team. jake peavy is just the tip of the iceberg. at some point there will have to be a discussion about the future of wrigley field. (ohhh my, the cathedral what will they do to the cathedral?) the grandstand is falling down and fans still fill the place, it is fucking amazing. the fans deserve better than that. the cubs fanbase has deserved better than they have gotten from the Tribune for a long, long time. my hope is that the next owner will give them what the deserve (there’s that cubbie blue optimism inside of me, i knew it was somewhere).
who doesn’t? cub fans have grown accustomed to the exploitation. some even enjoy it a little bit…lol.
wpbc
January 13, 2009 at 11:52 am
if any good comes from the financial meltdown gm, maybe a few teams like that one will not survive. i’d like to see mlb go back to about 26 teams. i think you’d have better talent on the clubs and we would rid ourselves of the bottom feeder franchises that can’t wait to cash the yankees luxury tax check every year.
wpbc
January 13, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Do we know for sure that Cuban bid $1.3 billion? I know I’ve read it as speculation and thought it might be true, but I have to seriously question that figure because I think had he actually offered that he’d have already taken over. I’m pretty sure 29 owners would approve of Cuban buying the Cubs for that kind of money.
MB21
January 13, 2009 at 12:16 pm
MD (or should I say MB21)
the reports were he offered between $1.2 billion and $1.3 billion.
what you say makes sense, i must remind you that this is the sale of a ballclub that makes no sense whatsoever.
i laughed when i heard that bid from cuban was that high. the bid was absurd. i wondered why the cubs didn’t fast track the deal at that point. but hey, i’m just a dumb fucking fan sitting in my mothers basement.
wpbc
January 13, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Here’s a link to a story about the second round of bids from July 31:
a few highlights:
at that time the Trib thought this thing was in the bank for over a billion in a highly leveraged deal that would help Zell dodge taxes.
Maury Brown says the deal could reach $1.5 billion in the next round:
oooops.
wpbc
January 13, 2009 at 12:27 pm
LMAO! “may prove difficult” — ya think? even in late july, it was plain that financing would be cutting down the price. with baseball excluding the only cash-rich buyer, the effect can only be exaggerated.
i wonder if we won’t be shocked when the deal finally does price, if one does. could the cubs asset package bill have been more than halved from july 2008 estimates?
gaius marius
January 13, 2009 at 1:33 pm
who knows at this point gm. why not anything is possible in the sale of this foresaken franchise?
starts to look like mark cuban was the brightest of the bunch backing away from this process. he knows that now is the time to hold onto cash and that’s what he is doing. wise.
wpbc
January 13, 2009 at 1:45 pm
as an aside — once a clown uniform, always a clown uniform.
gaius marius
January 13, 2009 at 1:47 pm
lmao. remember how long i laughed at their uniforms that night gm. i’m sure the laughter was alcohol enhanced but those unis were funny to me.
wpbc
January 13, 2009 at 2:00 pm
I think these were them…
those unis are in the ballpark for the worst ever list…
i’m gonna handout the wpbc.mlb.uniform grades one of these days.
wpbc
January 13, 2009 at 2:06 pm
I read on Cuban’s blog where he said he offered a competitive bid for team. $1.3 billion when others weren’t over $1 billion isn’t competitive, it’s blowing the competition away.
I guess I’m just cautious to accept that he bid that much at this point. Maybe he did. There’s no doubt the sale has been hurt by the economy, but I can’t help but think if Zell got that bid the team would be sold and Cuban would already be the owner.
That’s just my opinion and if you don’t like it, well, I have others. lol
MB21
January 13, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Oh yeah, you can call me Maddog, MB21, or piece of shit. Whichever one is easiest to remember.
MB21
January 13, 2009 at 7:56 pm
md, I laughed at the billion figure plenty of times. when Cuban supposedly offered it, that figure was not really questioned by anyone in the msm or cub blogosphere. So I have no idea where the truth on all of this is. The figure reported is all I can go by. If that is the case, Sam Zell lost alot of money when he didn’t accept that bid without question. Nothing out of the Tower surprises me these days, they have been finding ways to fuck their business for years now. Sam Zell is just the latest in that line.
wpbc
January 13, 2009 at 9:22 pm