MLB financially assist Mets, providing at least $20 million

[Omar]

New York Times

Major League Baseball provided $25 million to the owners of the Mets as they struggled to deal with a cash shortfall last fall and a looming lawsuit seeking hundreds of millions of dollars for victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s vast Ponzi scheme.

 

The direct intervention of Commissioner Bud Selig to help sustain the operations of the franchise is perhaps the most striking evidence yet of the financial distress that for many months has plagued the team’s owners, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz.

 

The trustee for victims of Madoff’s fraud has accused Wilpon and Katz of having turned a blind eye to warnings about the suspect nature of Madoff’s multibillion-dollar investment operation while using the profits they reaped from their own investments with him to enrich themselves and fuel their business empire. The trustee, Irving H. Picard, is seeking roughly $1 billion from the team’s owners and their various business partners.

 

The Mets have exhausted baseball’s standard bank line of credit — at least $75 million Selig and the sport’s owners make available to teams for a variety of reasons in the course of any year. They also have more than $400 million in debt on the team. Thus, the additional money provided by Selig — done in secret last November — may well have been crucial in keeping the club functioning. Three weeks ago, after months spent denying that they were in any significant financial trouble, Wilpon and Katz announced that they were willing to sell 25 percent of the club, a franchise valued by Forbes magazine at $858 million. In recent days, the men indicated they were willing to sell even a larger share of the team, but they have insisted they do not want to give up majority ownership. Selig’s decision to give what amounts to extraordinary assistance to one of the sport’s most prominent and highly valued teams — one owned by Wilpon, a man Selig has long regarded as a close personal friend — could anger other team owners, who might well wonder why their money is being used to rescue a team with a $140 million payroll.

[erik316wttn]

This is such a complete and total mess. I don't see how the Wilpons can keep the Mets after this lawsuit. It has to completely suck to be a Mets fan right now.

[Soul]

They want their cake and eat it too.

 

They blew up their business with their poor judgement, now they want someone to pay to keep them in business while they give up no control.

 

It would be like you & I asking the bank to pay off our home loan, but we still keep ownership of the house. We'd be laughed back out into the street.

 

But not these guys, apparently. Being buddies with Selig apparently means you get to walk between the rain drops.

[Omar]

It would be like you & I asking the bank to pay off our home loan, but we still keep ownership of the house. We'd be laughed back out into the street.

 

I was expecting a U.S. Federal Reserve-Top American banks analogy.

[Outshined_One]

They want their cake and eat it too.

 

They blew up their business with their poor judgement, now they want someone to pay to keep them in business while they give up no control.

 

Honestly...considering the Wilpons had their hands in scams perpetrated by the likes of Bernie Madoff, Sam Israel, and Allen Stanford, the Department of Justice and the SEC should be taking a really hard look at the Wilpons' finances. This article goes into more detail on the financial side of things.

 

Considering their involvement with some of the biggest financial schemes that have blown up over the past few years, there comes a point where you have to wonder if this is incompetence or something worse.

 

The words "bag men" come to mind.

[J.R.]

There is a tremendous volume of reading material on the 'net concerning Madoff, the Wilpons and just how deep the scheme went with the people in the Mets organization.

 

It is embarrassing to MLB in general and the National League in particular to have the Los Angeles and New York franchises mired in such ridiculous predicaments.