1
2011
Mets Need More Time To Pay Back $25M Loan From MLB
An article by Hojo's Mojo
According to Josh Kosman & Kaja Whitehouse of the NY Post, the Mets are seeking at least a four-month extension to pay back the $25 million emergency loan they got last year from Major League Baseball, while they work on closing the sales of minority stakes in the franchise.
“An extension has been discussed with the Commissioner and after some dancing, it should be approved,” a source following the situation said, adding that baseball commissioner Bud Selig has been speaking to baseball owners to rally support.
The team in the last few days made its 2011 revenue-sharing payment of $20 million, meeting the Nov. 30 deadline and easing concerns, a Mets spokesman confirmed.
Commissioner Bud Selig approved the then secret loan to Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz a year ago to help it make their revenue-sharing payment. Revenue sharing is the system where all teams pay in 30% of their local earnings and then that money is redistributed evenly 30 ways to all the teams. Those who kick in the most usually get much less back.
The Mets have said they have 6-7 investors who are interested in purchasing minority stakes in the team worth $20 million dollars each, but it could months before each individual deal is negotiated and nothing is a sure thing as we all learned from the David Einhorn situation which collapsed in the final days of the deal.
The Post also reported that the Mets and MLB declined comment on the extension.
About the Author: Rob Johnson
19 Comments + Add Comment
Recent Comments
- Connor O'Brien: on When Will We See Wilmer Flores?: Completely agree.
- Tim Byrdak's Surgeon: on Plawecki Nearing A Promotion From Savannah: http://www.minorleagueball.com/2011/4/22/2123847/the-significance-of-minor-league-k-rates I'd recommend reading the whole thing plus...
- Connor O'Brien: on Mets Need More Time To Get Better Understanding Of Ike Davis?: No sabermetrics tell you he is a...
- Metsie: on So Where Are All Those Moneyball Players?: Which is why Sabers suck and should...
- philipag: on When Will We See Wilmer Flores?: Yes, yes and yes.
MMO Mets Chat
Need Tickets To The Mets Game?
Check Out These Great MLB Links!
Photographs From Gordon Donovan
5391 Fans Follow Us On Twitter!
1269 Fans Like Us On Facebook!
2341 Fans Read Our Feed!
1702 Fans Subscribe via Daily Email!
This is clearly all Sandy Alderson and Sabermetric’s fault right?
Actually, quite the opposite. Sabermetric guys are good with numbers. The Wilpons, apparently, are not. :-O
Wilpon is broke ……….Jose we’ll ya take a check ??
So long it’s been good to know you. Have a good 5 yeaars,Jose.
why don’t sell the team and just go away? take alderson and his other goons with ya on the way out…
the is what happens when you have a owner who runs there business with a ponzi scheme. lots hope it gets so bad he as to sell or we can kiss any chance of winning, of course after we get a new gm, goodbye.
How much money did the franchise lose in TV viewership, Ticket Sales and other merchandising sales last year when Sandy “Punted” half way through the season?
I’m not saying that the current problems are Sandy’s fault, but his approach of cutting players and hoping for success from AA players three years down the road aren’t the best way to fix the problems either.
I pray what I perceive is wrong….I pray that Sandy is this very cool poker player that some people make him out to be…I really hope I see something positive this year. I’m just not gonna bet on it.
USMF: It’s not like 2010 was a good year. 2009 attendance was 3.1 mil down to 2.5 mil in 2010. Then in 2011 2.3 mil.
I guarantee you that financially the drop from 2009 to 2010 attendance hurt the franchise’s pockets more than 2011 did.
Plus ad sales for television are sold ahead of time. Therefore sponsor dollars for the 2011 season would be based on prior years viewers, so the 2012 income would be impacted by a drop in 2011 viewers.
Also, I don’t know this but how do you know merch is down? It may have been reported but I didn’t see it.
Dont forget construction of the new wall, that cost alone likely is taking a bigger toll on the checkbook over viewers, merch and tickets.
As far as the wall construction costs Jessep, Jeff Wilpon was quoted to say that the funds for that will come from the $40M from coming under budget on the construction of Citi Field.
nytimes.com/2011/11/01/sports/baseball/mets-to-alter-dimensions-of-citi-field.html?pagewanted=all
Right but I’m saying the actual COST of it was an unbudgeted item.
TV Revenues were determined from ad sales done early in the year. Those #s shouldn’t be a big surprise in November.
Ticket Sales being down less than 200,000 isn’t a huge huge drop and likely was expected. In fact you could possibly make a case that 2.3mil fans in 2011 was higher than expected
Merch Sales I can’t comment on because I don’t know the final #s.
When you prepare a budget of income and expenses, you do project how things will turn out.
I’m just saying I don’t think the reason the Mets can’t pay back a $25mil loan is because of the 2011 season. The significant attendance drop from 2009 to 2010, the consistently high payroll, the stadium costs and you know that guy Bernie Madoff likely have more to do with this news report than Sandy Alderson
WRONG WRONG WRONG!
The on;ly money the Mets get from TV rights is a flat fee per year (it might accelerate each year).
It has nothing to do with Advertising or SNY profits, the Mets get none of that! Wilpons get a share but they are two seperate entities!
SNY has a contract to air the games and they sell all the advertising and keep all that money.
You guys clearly don’t understand the TV business!
None of the money generated by SNY actually goes to the mets. Some may go to the Wilpons as a shareholder but that doesn’t mean the Mets can just spend money based on that unless the Wilpons decide to use personal money to float the team!
And part of those right fees actually goes to the MLB in case anyone didn’t know that!
Isn’t SNY owned by the Mets (Sterling), TimeWarner and NBCU?
No…Sterling owns the Mets,Sterling also owns a piece of SNY. They are not the same company! The Mets do not own or are the same company AS sterling!
The mets don’t own the real Estate business the real estate business owns the Mets!
It also owns the Network!
Two seperate entiies and businesses.
If you were Time Warner or NBCU would you allow one of your partners to take your profits to invest in a business they have no piece of?
Sterling is a holding company!
The METS are a baseball team OWNED by that holding company!
The idea they are one and the same is dead wrong!
“Let’s face it, in order to grow our attendance and grow our revenues – because basically that’s our variable source of revenue, everything else is kind of plugged in, television contracts and those types of things – to improve our live gate revenue, we have to put a better product on the field. At the same time, we have to be conscious of our expense, and I think it’s important that we bring those things into equilibrium.”
Do you REALLY have to put a better product on the field to maintain or increase attendance?
Or do you have to at least give the fans some HOPE that you will be putting a better team on the field so they will re-up tickets they bought last year or get new buyers to reserve seats for next season?
The Majority of attendance has less to do with who showed up and lots to do with how many tickets were sold. The majority of which are Season plans of one sort or another. If the fans go or not will affect the concession revenue but the attendance is still being PAID even if you do not decide to go to that game if you have a full season plan.
The TV money is based on how well and how much the rights are worth at the time of the signing. That may fluctuate and accelerate each year but it is a fixed cost until the contract has run out.
That money is NOT dependent on how good your team is or who is one it. Winning a WS will not increase what you get from those TV during a contract but will only be seen if your still good when it comes time to renew those tv rights.
A winning team will influence more IMPULSE purchases to game day and single game tickets but that is a very small part of the total attendance figures that go towards paying the bills.
The Majority of the attendance is based on how many season tickets and BULK game purchases are made and those are bought and paid for before the first game can be won or lost!
They are sold on a BELIEF that there will or will not be a good product to see!
Which means what you do in the OFFSEASON has a lot more to do with your attendance and ticket sales than anything that happens DURING the season in a positive or negative light!
If your GOOD you will have the more impulse buys on top of the season ticket holders and if your bad you will get less people to go to the game on impulse and some will even skip using tickets they already purchased!
So NO attendance really has NOTHING to do with how well you play as far as ticket sales go. It is all about the PERCEPTION of that team at the time you have to decide to buy season tickets that sets the bar on how many tickets you will have GUARANTEED sold and the winning or losing onbly affects how many more you sell on impulse and day of game sales!
And it is amplified by the fact that for each ticket sold you also get concession money on top of that!
So WINNING might help in that bregard but as far as Ticket sales go it is really all about what the fans percieve is worth buying during the off season!
If they think the team is worth seeing in dec and Jan they will buy a season plan.
If they don’t they will skip buying leading to less attendance overall UNLESS they are wrong and the team is really good!
Which usually means you didn’t sell tickets for the first half of the season until the fans see how wrong they were about their perception!
I can’t find the monthly breakdown, but just by watching the games you could tell that while Attendance wasn’t great at the start of the year, it had a significant drop off once the team started losing. They were a game above 500 at the All Star Break when Sandy Traded K-Rod and started the losing which led to lose of interest of the fans.
The start of 2011, attendance was down because we believed that it was a waste year to purge off Castillo and Perez’s contacts and get a chance to reload and get healthy for 2012.
2010 and 2009 started off pretty good, but dropped off as quickly as Mets hit the DL and fell out of contention.
I’m not gonna blame Alderson for 2009-10, obviously they weren’t his fault, injuries mostly. I gave him a pass on 2011 because I assumed that he was going to reinvest in the team in 2012. I’m not so sure that’s his plan, in fact seeing that payroll is going to be dropped by 40mil for 2012, it’s pretty obvious it’s not the plan.
My point is…if Sandy doesn’t do something to prove to the fans that the 2012 season isn’t a waste and he’s just going to dump Wright as soon as he gets the chance, the fans won’t bother to come out for any part of the season. We’ll see empty seats all year long and revenue will drop more forcing the team into a bigger hole.
If Sandy signed Reyes and added legitimate depth to the rotation and Pen, it would give the fans a little bit of hope and a reason to watch…and a little bit of hope is all die hard Mets fans need. Doing nothing just proves to us that we should find something better to do.
It is hard to find the actual attendance vs the paid attendance USMF but for what it’s worth Baseball-Reference does a pretty good job on tracking the paid attendance I believe.
Here is a look at the paid attendance to the Mets 81 home games.
baseball-reference.com/play-index/share.cgi?id=Ytjm9
The monthly breakdown if correct comes out to the following.
April (13 games**) 346,019
May (14 games) 398,559
June (11 games) 336,002
July (10 games) 374,785
August (17 games**) 463,980
September (16 games**) 433,251
Total = 2,352,596
** Shows zero attendance for 1st game of doubleheader on Apr 14, Aug 29, Sept 8.
ESPN so you know has a different total. It says the Mets total attendance for 2011 was 2,378,549 in 79 games.
espn.go.com/mlb/attendance/_/sort/homePct
Dont forget construction of the new wall, that cost alone likely is taking a bigger toll on the checkbook over viewers, merch and tickets.
Wow, is this what lawyers refer to as the insanity defense?
Too bad the wilpons pal Madoff can’t help them set up the accounts for the genius’s who will contribute 20 mill each for 3 per cent interest.Bernie always got 10-12 per cent a year for his investors.Since Fred thought 10-12 per cent every year no matter how the market fared was normal, how come he is only offerring 3 per cent?Is it because now that Madoff is in jail, he figured out that anything more than 3 per cent every year for 20 years will get u thrown in jail for life? Has any of the guys who have written hundreds of posts abiut resigning Reyes ever stopped to look at returning to the Mets from Reyes’s mindset.Why would he want to return to this pathetic loser franchise if he can leave, pick a team of his choice and get big money,If i was JR i would never resign with team!!!