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March 17, 2005
The Man With All The Leverage
I can't say I'm terribly surprised at the recent actions of Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos and his, "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is ours," take on the way his team and the Washington Nationals should split up the television revenue in the greater Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area. I said as much back in the Summer of 2002, when I wrote that Baltimore's potential loss of television revenue alone might be enough to scupper an Expos to Washington deal. And come to think of it, Angelos is in the ultimate no-lose situation these days. Baseball has already guaranteed a minimum price for the Orioles once he decides to sell. Now that he has that in the bag, just what incentive does he have to settle? If MLB breaks off the negotiations and strikes a deal independently of Angelos and the Orioles (which I can't dream will ever happen), he'll just go to court to try to block things. And while I don't think he can keep the Nationals off the air, chew this over: Who is going to want to buy a baseball team while one of its major revenue streams is the subject of litigation? Or, say at the 11th hour, MLB caves in to his demands, and gives him what he wants? Again, who is going to want to buy a team whose television rights are controlled by another franchise? Better yet, say his price is so high, it drives down the ultimate sales price of the team below the level that the other 28 major league owners are willing to accept? If that comes to pass my friends, keep the date of December 17, 2006 marked on your calendars. Because that's when MLB's current collective bargaining agreement expires, and the league is once again allowed to revist the issue of contraction. If I was Angelos, I'd be threatening to keep the television issue tied up in the courts to discourage any potential ownership group from taking full custody of the team. And if he can drag it out to the beginning of the 2006 season, he can credibly put contraction back on the table. But what about MLB's agreement with D.C. to get a stadium built? In business, any deal has a breakup fee, and one that would probably be easily recouped if and when the league decided to auction off a pair of new expansion franchises to replace the Nationals and Tampa Bay Devil Rays (MLB's biggest mistake since the Seattle Pilots). And does anyone honestly think that a man who has made billions as a trial lawyer won't be able to at least credibly threaten a course of action just like the one I've described? Yep, things are looking pretty good for Havana Pete these days, feet up on the desk, just waiting for the best deal.
Eric
12:12 AM
Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry: CommentsGood ol' Petey... he couldn't stop DC baseball, so now he's going to try to strangle it in the crib. Of course, he could render the Nationals irrelevant to his income stream if his team was actually half-decent. But he's done his damnedest to make sure that won't happen, with his micromanagement. I had an old roommate whose entire spiel on Angelos could be summed up in 3 words: "Steinbrenner, except stupid." Posted by:
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