A 2008 agreement between Miami-Dade county and Jeffrey Loria (and his partners) saw the county fund most of the $515 million government-owned Marlins stadium in Little Havana. In exchange, the county was promised the right to 5 percent of any profits Loria & co. earned if they sold the team within 10 years. Yet Loria’s lawyers have released documents telling the county not to expect any money at all from last year’s $1.2 billion sale of the Marlins, Douglas Hanks of the Miami Herald writes. The reasoning from Loria’s camp is that his accountants claim the sale amounted to a net loss of $141MM. The breakdown they offer begins with a $625MM agreed-to underlying value of the franchise, $280MM in debt, circa $300MM in taxes tied to the sale and a write-off of the $30MM fee paid to financial advisors. Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez says that the city may sue to collect the taxpayers’ fair share of that $1.2 billion. My message is that this community really allowed you to make a lot of money,” he said on Friday. “He should do the right thing. He made profits, and he made big profits. He should share that with the people who allowed him to do that.”
Here are a few other tidbits from around the league’s Eastern teams…
- Newly-acquired Rays infielder Christian Arroyo was working out at Tropicana Field on Friday morning, Bill Chastain of MLB.com writes. MLB Pipeline’s 81st overall prospect saw his 2017 season end due to a broken hand, but surgeon Donald Sheridan cleared him for baseball activities after a visit on January 9th. “The hand is great,” Arroyo said. “Right now, it’s about getting back into baseball shape.” The 22-year-old came to Tampa Bay in this winter’s trade that sent Evan Longoria to San Francisco. He hit .192/.244/.304 across 135 plate appearances with the Giants last year in his first taste of big-league action, and figures to be in the Rays’ infield mix for the coming season.
- Speaking of young players returning from injury, Red Sox left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez could potentially miss a few starts at the beginning of the season after undergoing right knee patellofemoral ligament reconstruction surgery, Ian Browne of MLB.com writes. “[The injury] happened, like, three times already,” Rodriguez pointed out. “I was just trying to fight to pitch with a knee like that. And I did it. Sometimes there would be ups and downs. Now it’s time to get back to the guy I was before I got the surgery.” The 24-year-old southpaw’s had his share of ups and downs across parts of three seasons with the Red Sox. Last season, he put up 137 1/3 innings for the club while striking out 9.83 batters per nine and posting a 4.19 ERA overall.
- Eduardo Nunez and Todd Frazier are currently the Mets’ leading choices in their search for an infielder, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports via Twitter. They’re apparently leery of getting “used” by Frazier (presumably for leverage) if he prefers the Yankees as his ultimate destination. In addition, the Mets are reportedly reluctant to bring back second baseman Neil Walker, and aren’t getting any traction in their efforts to acquire Josh Harrison from the Pirates. Lastly, Rosenthal adds that the team is interested in signing Alex Cobb or Lance Lynn out of free agency if their prices dip low enough.
Loria lost 141M from selling the team?
I hope they sue the pants off of that ArseHat. Undoubtedly he profited big time from the half-Billion dollars that the citizens of Miami gave him. I hope they sue him for $515M, and that he loses.
Agree! One of the worst, worst owners in Baseball! Greedy & corrupt man! Really disgusting!
Loria purchased the team for $158 million in 2002, $38.5 million of which was loaned to him interest-free by MLB. Last year he sold the team for $1.2 billion.
Despite the spin on whatever the details of the actual sale were, Loria has made a disgusting amount of money from this deal. It’s really sick that he’s refusing to pay up what he contractually owes to the community.
Get in bed with a snake, don’t be surprised you got bit.
Oh okay thanks. I didn’t know the original details when he bought the team. Sounds like he owes quite a bit back to say the least. Hopefully he’s forced to pay the piper.
Does this really surprise anyone? He is who he is, a dishonest money-hungry thief.
Whatever state these accountants are in should revoke their CPA credential.
Aside from the idiotic reasoning, why would there be taxes on a “loss”? The current value of the team has NOTHING to do with the calculation of profit or loss. The only relevant numbers there are the $1.2 billion sale price, the $158 MM purchase price, and the $30 MM paid to advisors. That looks like a profit of somewhere around $1.012 billion. If he doesn’t want the IRS all over him, that’s what he will report on the relevant tax return.
So he owes them what $50 million ? 5% of a billion ! He’s getting off cheap if that’s it!
Loria really is a P.O.S.
Jeffrey Loria’s depth of shadiness and ability to be a financial manipulator has no bounds… I’m not even a Marlins fan but I am sure glad he is out of the game. He seems to be competing with Frank McCourt for worst modern MLB owner. Hopefully MLB will try and stop people like this in the future but I’m skeptical…
Keeping people like Loria out of MLB is not in MLB’s interest. These are the very people who dream up schemes like how to convince locals to fund their private business ventures.
There is a really good piece on reason.com today about this, although it primarily focuses on NFL teams. It thoroughly attacks the entire BS practice of public funding for these stadiums/arenas.
Yes, public funding of private enterprise is a garbage scheme that only benefits people who are generally billionaires anyway. I believe MLB should contract the marlins and the city should sue Loria into actual poverty.
First the Cory shouldn’t have been dumb enough to fund the stadium. It never works. Next, if you ever find anything take your share off the top line not the bottom. 1% of sale beats 10% of profit every time.
Third they should play hardball with Jeter and co and renegotiate the lease or a repurchase so the taxpayers get some of their money back.
Government needs to stay out of entertainment industry.
*city. Stupid autocorrect.
Agreed 100%
Only Loria. What a despicable man. Gets fed over a billion dollars despite being the worst owner and has a taxpayer built stadium, and still can give money back to those people
Agreed.. The city’s end would only be about $30 million which he had no problem paying his “financial advisers”. But, giving the city barely 5% back of what they paid for that stadium is something he can not bring himself to do? What a complete waste of oxygen. If he continues to live in Miami I hope the police enforce every parking regulation and city ordinance when it concerns him. Give him a nice $100 fine every time his garbage cans are 1 inch too far from the curb..
I really hope Harvey is moved to bullpen. He has the makeup and skill for closer. Even when he was an elite starter he had trouble going through batting orders three times. Closer, he can let it fly for one or two innings, can keep his ego that often goes along with closers in the game, and can worry less about being paid more as a starter since closers are starting to make bank too now. I’ve heard thoughts on wheeler moving to pen but I’d rather see him try and start when healthy and move Harvey now! If it fails it fails and he won’t be on the team next year anyway.
I think the BP is his best option, but that requires him having to navigate his massive ego. I’m hoping a new skipper and pitching coach can have an effective Coming To Jesus talk with Matt because it’s his last year under contract and if he wants ANY kind of decent deal in FA he needs to perform.
Unfortunately no chance Boras let’s this happen in a contract year. He’ll be looking for big time starter money (regardless if he’s worth it). Hopefully Callaway can work some magic with this pitching staff.
So they get no money AND have that ugly stadium with bad team in their city. What a deal.
what a lying p.o.s Loria is. he bought that team for 158 million. he’s making big profit off the sale.
What a betrayal by Loria. But to a lesser extent this is happening to cities/fanbases in all pro sports. Owners get a taxpayer base to fund stadiums and sweetheart tax deals, charge ticket and concession prices that prevent most of that fanbase from actually attending games and then sell/leave when something better comes along. Look what the NFL just did to long time fanbases in St. Louis, San Diego and Oakland.
Loria is slime, but the bigger issue here is when are politicians and voters going to wake up and stop giving handouts to these billionaire welfare pigs?
Study after study after study has debunked the myth that these stadiums and sports arenas are good for the local economy, which is irrelevant even if it were true. There is no justification for taxpayer money being handed over to these modern-day highwaymen. These franchises are privately owned business entities that are already permitted to flout federal anti-trust laws daily…they need to be told to finance their own effing facilities like any other business would be expected to.
Well said.
Came in to say this. Miami should not have agreed to that deal in the first place.
Agreed. Kudos to San Diego for telling the Chargers to F off. And LOL that the NFL and Chargers’ ownership were surprised to find Charger fans refused to drive the 4 hour roundtrip to L.A. to support the team that had been stolen from them.
“Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez says that the city may sue to collect the taxpayers’ fair share…”
May sue? Why isn’t it a certainty? Refuse to settle. Put Loria in the box. FOLLOW The MONEY. When you follow the money you’ll find that every dollar of the “debt” is profit. Loria was provided with vast amounts of revenue sharing dollars in addition to the enormous sums every team gets. There was never any debt. Loria stole the revenue sharing money and took out loans on the team.
No MLB team ever loses money. Any creation of debt is actually profit. Once this is established with Loria he should be able to be indicted and convicted for felony fraud.
If contract is drawn up the way I imagine they’ll just add lawyer cost to the current loss. Suing is unlikely to help. Better to figure out a way to make money on the lease and other stadium use.
Loser pays lawyers fees. Loria can’t win. He’s guilty as sin.
Follow The MONEY.
Completely incorrect. Each lawyer’s fees are paid by the party they are representing. That shouldn’t be new information.
Also Loria probably thought ahead back when the deal passed so most likely there’s some logical sentence structure they can argue semantics over.
When you argue over words, the better lawyers win.
Following the money might lead you to it, but it’s unlikely they’ll be able to win it back
public funded stadiums need to be outlawed. owners make the money, they own the team, they need to build the stadium.
Bingo.
public funded housing is called HUD, public funded stadiums are HUD stadiums.
“The breakdown they offer begins with a $625MM agreed-to underlying value of the franchise…”
So, Loria’s argument is that a randomly determined figure of $625 million, and not the $158 million he paid for the team, should be the starting point to determine profit or loss?
And they MIGHT sue him? I’d call some lawyers were I them. The guy with the stones to make that argument isn’t going to give you a penny without a fight.
The $625 million isn’t randomly determined. They did a valuation of the team before the stadium was built and the city agreed it was $625 million. You may think that Loria should pay a share of the profit from BEFORE the stadium was built to the city but there was no way he’d agree to that. That said, if $625 million was the valuation, the city should’ve played hard ball, because anyone buying the team would be in the same situation. They should’ve valued the team less.
I assume Loria can show that the sale price was $920 million because he had to retire $280 million in debt. That he rung up debt operating the team doesn’t change the increased value of the team. If the city agreed to that they were stupid.
I assume that the contract allows Loria to deduct the taxes he’s paying to Uncle Sam. If the city agreed to have this deducted before they got their share they made a bad deal. Likewise, if the city allows Loria to deduct the taxes on the profit from the first $625 million they made a bad deal.
Loria, despite taxes, and debt, will make a ton of money. The city may be morally entitled to some of that but if the contract is the way it is indicated here they probably aren’t. Miami went into this with their eyes wide open. They agreed to it. I have no sympathy for them if they made a bad deal.
OK. I thought he was giving the city the Jeter group’s valuation of the team.
Blame the politicians, who yet again….allowed outside influence to negatively impact the real world numbers. There had yet to be a stadium deal that actually made sense for tax payers. Corp welfare when it comes to stadium deals is some of the worst economic decisions a city can make. Miami just likes to double down and be wrong multiple times.
I hope Todd Frasier doesn’t go to the Mets. They’ve been needing a 3rd baseman for over 3 years now. David Wright needs to be bought out and retire. He’ll never play again.
Why buy him out when insurance pays his contract? That makes no sense
There’s no reason to not buy him out. Doubt the insurance covers everything. They didn’t go into that deal knowing he was gonna be done 3 years into it. They added it later. Prince fielder only got 75% of his monster deal with insurance.
From what I’ve read, D. Wright’s insurance plan picks up 75% of his salary after 60 days continuously on the DL. The Wilpons love the current setup because they can prop David up and “hope” he comes back, which allows them to continue to sell tickets using his name, AND and pay him about what they’d pay for a bench player. The only better deal out there is the pittance they paid for Tebow to gain all sorts of free publicity.
Here comes Morgan and Morgan representing the Taxpayer. You heard it here first.
And Derek Jeter’s the bad guy?
I know Jeter’s been bad guy #1 this offseason, but I’m still holding out hope that they have a real plan to get fiscally under control, and from there build a long-term successful franchise. It will obviously be a few years before we can actually tell if it’s working or not, but…
they can’t be worse than Loria! They just can’t!
Jeter is Loria 2.0
Criminal what Jeter just did to the Marlins franchise. They have no future other than what they have been, a AAAA farm team for MLB playoff contenders.
He handled the PR side poorly. The plan to come in and blow up the roster was likely to happen with any new ownership group, but his handling as the face of the ownership group was poor.
He should offer his infamous gift baskets to all six of the die=hard Miami Marlin fans he strung along, screwed, and left outside of the ballpark.
They’re BOTH awful people.
That Loria guy is one of the douchiest of the Douchiest owners in the history of the game. The gift that keeps on giving on a vulnerable MLB market….thank you Bud Selig for introducing this a#|hole into the game of baseball….
Yet Jeter is already running ahead of Loria for the title of worst owner ever.
Uhm…the Wilpons are definitely worse than Jeter because they have been lying to their fan base for the better part of a decade…ever since the Madoff scandal happened.
True. Loria was originally from New York, an art dealer. Wilpons, Jeter. Something about New York and fraud.
Jeter only has a 10 % ownership stake!
AND he ruined the Expos BEFORE he was essentially gifted the Marlins franchise. He was the one who gutted Montreal and then sold the shell to MLB to run until they sold the franchise to the Lerners to move to DC. So they KNEW what he was & STILL let him buy the Marlins, with a big loan from them. Unbelievable.
MLB needs better owners, the current mob is like, all of America’s worst rich people.
his accountants are using funny math.
1,200,000,000 sale price
– 625,000,000 agreed worth by county
__________
575,000,000 profit
610,000,000 debt/taxes/fees
__________
-35,000,000 total losses, not -141,000,000
Loria is simply the scum of the Earth….
Jeter should be indicted as Loria’s codefendant and the two of them sent to prison until they die.
I think we can all agree how much Jeff Loria has suffered while owning the Marlins, and how much he sacrificed on behalf of the taxpayers and fans. Every morning, Jeff Loria woke up thinking “how can I serve the public today?”
Anyone shocked by Loria……? That guy has acted like a scumbag since day 1. I’m not surprised he has one parting gift for the S. FL tax payers, whom he has already screwed over.
But Derek Jeter is working overtime to make baseball fans forget about Loria and doing a heck of a job of it.
Jeffrey Loria- Ultimate Owner! Privatize gains, socialize losses.
As despicable as Loria is, I doubt that the county can win the lawsuit. Loria always make the most ECONOMICALLY sensible moves.
They can’t lose. Just follow the money.
There is 0% chance the Mets get Cobb or Lynn. Whatever “low enough” is for the Wilpons, it’s at least $20M less than everyone else. It’s truly embarrassing that the Mets will probably get outbid for a FA they are “interested” in by BOTH Minnesota & Milwaukee.
The Mets should have signed Hosmer, Arrieta and Darvish. They have the money for that but Wilpon steals it.
They don’t need Hosmer though, Dom Smith is sick.
The Jeffrey Loria Fan Club must be the loneliest club ever. No one, and I mean no one, can stand Loria. Nor should they.
Jeter is making people forget Loria though. It takes a really special kind of scumminess to make people forget Loria, but Jeter is doing it.
The day he quits and re-joins the Yankees is going to be a hilarious and infuriating day and he should end up in jail for giving Stanton to them for nothing – you all wanna talk collusion? That’s the most crystal clear example. Eff Jeter.
So funny that Mets might sign an FA SP. A short 3 years after the goldenboy pitching staff was destined to be the $Billion staff.
“I was just trying to fight to pitch with a knee like that. And I did it. Sometimes there would be ups and downs.”
When are MLB teams going to start fining players for playing hurt? It is the stupidest thing about this game, other than bunting, sliding into 1B, and the pitcher W-L stat.
Why can’t players learn and see that playing hurt isn’t noble or strong, as it turns them into replacement level players and their team loses games by having them out there. At 100% you are elite, at even 90% you are a scrub, that’s the fine line that so many, many players constantly cross and we the fans lose out by having to watch legends like Bryce Harper have a pathetic .814 OPS/1.6 WAR over a season. If teams want to be smarter, they need to address this dumb jock “play through it” mentality.
It doesn’t make sense that the Mets would not make an offer to a free agent because they are worried the player would use it as leverage to get a better deal with another team. If that were true, they would never sign any free agents.
Perhaps Loria should be “Made an offer he can’t refuse”.
Can I use Loria’s logic the next time I report a capital gain on my tax return?
If he tries that on his tax return, he will end up in jail. IRS has a slightly different idea about calculating gains. If i buy a stock and sell it later for more than I paid for it, that difference is income. i can’t claim a loss because the stock is worth more than it was when I bought it. ,
But stocks don’t have operating costs attached to them.
Nor do they have year over year taxes, a payroll, a staff, etc.
Sure, Loria is garbage, but people are thinking about this way too simply.
None of that stuff you mention has any bearing on the calculation of capital gain. The expenses, including taxes, are included on the tax returns filed each year showing the team’s profit or loss for that year. Loria can’t capitalize those annual expenses, other than maybe some very minor ones that would relate to long term repairs on the stadium that he pays for. Given that he doesn’t own the stadium, he probably can’t even do that.
His gain on the sale is easy to determine: the selling price less the basis (original cost plus or minus some adjustments for things that can be capitalized) and the expenses of the sale. It’s not rocket science.
Never ever socialize people in private business who’s motto is to make as much money for themselves and to never share it.
They’ll take advantage of the taxpayers and screw them over like they have everyone else in their lives.
New all time low for Loria. POS.
The Mets are afraid of being used? LOL… their disfunctional organization is always dropping nuggets of hilarity.
Mets need to lock up Nunez and Lynn, I’m ok rolling into the season with that team. Leaves the few trade chips we have in place for the deadline, provides depth and won’t cost them a fortune.
Lynn would bump Wheeler (most likely) to the pen, which would be great. Wheeler would bump the worst arm down. If Lynn can pitch to his career average it is a win for the Mets.