If you had over $1.2 billion just lying around, it seems you would have had the option to bid on a Major League Baseball team. The most recent sale of a major league team looks to be all but finalized. The Miami Marlins have been sold to a group led by businessman Bruce Sherman, that also includes New York Yankee icon, Derek Jeter. To put that pricing in perspective, according to Forbes, the average value of an MLB team is just around $1.5 billion, so it looks like the Marlins are selling at a bit of a discount. This move comes as a happy and much anticipated moment for Marlins fans everywhere as they had long grown weary of current owner Jeffrey Loria’s shortcomings. For far too long have the fans in South Florida suffered losing seasons and bad business deals at the hands of Loria’s cheap ways. This is not to say that he isn’t getting away with nothing considering he purchased the organization for about $158 million back in 2002. Loria will make more than seven times what he paid for the team.
To have the new deal completed, the wealth-management businessman Sherman has opted to put up $400 million of his own cash. While it doesn’t make this the end all-be all of the acquisition, it falls in line with MLB’s rules of purchasing a franchise. The next step in the process will be lengthy interviews with the whole purchasing team; which will of course include Jeter. It has been speculated that Jeter will be serving as the CEO of the Marlins if and when Major League Baseball approves of the sale. This even though he is only pledging a reported $25 million, or 2 percent, of the whole purchase.
We’ll see in the next weeks or months what happens, but it’s beginning to look like there will be a new ownership group in Miami. Once that happens, the next step will be turning the franchise around that’s been bitten by a little bad luck for over a decade.
