LOS ANGELES – For sale: A minority stake in the Dodgers.
The six members of Guggenheim Baseball Management who purchased the franchise for $2.15 billion five years ago have retained an investment banker to explore the possibility of selling a piece of the team. The New York-based Galatioto Sports Partners performed the same service for the Chicago Cubs a year ago, selling minority shares in the team worth approximately $300 million.
The Dodgers are seeking to sell no specific number of shares and the potential sales would not change the operational structure of the team with Mark Walter as controlling owner and chairman and Stan Kasten as team president and CEO.
Kasten confirmed the arrangement with GSP but would not discuss the financial issues involved other than calling this “a good point in the market” for sports franchises. The Dodgers’ valuation has no doubt increased since the 2012 sale of the franchise, stadium and half-interest in the surrounding parking lots, perhaps to as much as $3 billion.
“We are just exploring what kind of partners we can bring in and what kind of contributions they can make,” said Kasten, acknowledging that the team has been “constantly” approached by “a steady stream” of interested investors and explored other potential minority-stakes sales in the past five years without acting on any.
“We don’t have any preconceptions about what this might produce.”
What it produced for the Cubs a year ago was an infusion of cash that was then used to fund the massive renovation project underway at Wrigley Field and in the surrounding neighborhood. The Dodgers have no such projects in the works having already spent about $200 million on Dodger Stadium in the past few years and a renovated Campo Las Palmas in the Dominican Republic.
Contact the writer: bplunkett@scng.com
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