The legal battle which has been hovering over the Padres for the past year-plus moved a bit closer to resolution this week. While it’s not over the finish line, it appears the club took one step toward closer and potentially being sold. Various details were provided by Dennis Lin of The Athletic, Eben Novy-Williams, Kurt Badenhausen and Scott Soshnick of Sportico, as well as Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Interested readers are encouraged to read those pieces in full to get all of the pertinent details. The key takeaway is that Sheel Seider, widow of Peter Seider, has dropped many of the claims in her lawsuit against Peter’s brothers. The two sides of the lawsuit have reached agreement on many of the claims, with the exceptions of those related to trust distributions and demand for accounting.
After Peter died in November of 2023, his stake in the team was placed in a trust. Eric Kutsenda, a business associate of Peter’s, was made the club’s control person on an interim basis. Teams are often owned by many people but MLB designates one individual the control person to represent the team in league matters. Peter’s brother John Seidler was reportedly set to be named control person in December of 2024. Two of Peter’s other brothers, Matt and Bob, remained involved in his trust.
In January of 2025, Sheel filed suit against Matt and Bob, seeking to be named control person of the franchise. The suit claimed that Peter wanted control of the franchise to eventually pass to his young children, with her steering the franchise in the interim. The suit accused Peter’s brothers of various types of malfeasance to take control of the club, including selling themselves assets at below-market prices, and to eventually sell it. Matt then filed a response with a counter narrative, saying that Peter never listed Sheel as a trustee despite amending his trust multiple times and that many transactions had been made to her benefit.
MLB approved John as control person on February of 2025. In November of 2025, the Padres announced that they would be exploring a sale of the club, despite no signs of progress with the dispute. As mentioned, this week’s news seems to represent progress, but with some hurdles remaining.
Acee reports it’s likely that a sale will not take place until full resolution of the legal matters. That’s a situation with some recent precedent in Major League Baseball. After the death of Orioles’ owner Peter Angelos, his surviving family members engaged in a similar fight for control, also involving lawsuits. Those suits were dropped in February of 2023. Later that year, it was reported that David Rubenstein was in talks to buy the club, which he eventually did.
Sportico identifies Jose E. Feliciano and Dan Friedkin as two people interested in buying the club. Feliciano’s investment firm Clearlake Capital was part of the BlueCo consortium which bought the English Premier League club Chelsea in 2022 for roughly $3 billion in USD. Forbes estimates Feliciano’s net worth to be $3.9 billion. Clearlake reportedly has about $90 billion under management. Mark Walter, Dodgers’ control person and chief executive officer of Guggenheim Partners, was also part of BlueCo.
Friedkin also owns a Premier League club, having purchased Everton in 2024 for an undisclosed price. He also owns the Serie A club Roma. Forbes estimates his net worth to be just under $9.9 billion. He was born in San Diego in 1965.
Joe Lacob is also identified as someone with interest by all three articles linked above. Lacob has been connected to various MLB clubs in the past, including the Athletics and the Angels. He owns the NBA’s Golden State Warriors and the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries. Forbes estimate his net worth to be $2.3 billion.
Forbes calculates the value of the franchise at $1.95 billion. Sportico comes in a bit higher at $2.3 billion. This week’s reporting suggests the Padres are likely to seek far more than that, with Acee reporting the team likely values itself in the $2.5 to $3 billion range. If they can get anywhere close to that, it would be a record. The largest sale of an MLB club to date is the $2.4 billion Steve Cohen paid to buy the Mets.
It’s possible that a sale could provide some greater certainty about the future of the club in a few areas. The player payroll peaked in 2023, with Cot’s Baseball Contracts putting the Friars at $249MM that year, but has been at a lower tier since then.
That has seemingly played a role in some transactions. Juan Soto’s final year of club control was traded to the Yankees, with younger and cheaper players coming back in return. The Friars signed Nick Pivetta last year but backloaded it significantly, with Pivetta only getting $4MM in the first year of a four-year, $44MM deal. With the cheapest year now completed, he has been in trade rumors this winter.
The person making the decisions about those transactions is president of baseball operations A.J. Preller, who has been running the San Diego front office since 2014. There has been some reported tension between him and the new guys running the team. Despite the club being fairly successful on the field, Preller is going into the final year of his contract and rumors of extension talks haven’t led to a new deal, putting him in lame duck status for 2026.
Photo courtesy of Chadd Cady, Imagn Images
