The most anyone has ever paid to own a Major League Baseball franchise is $2.4 billion, the mark that Steve Cohen paid back in 2020 when he purchased the New York Mets. That mark is about to be shattered, however.
The Seidler family, who has owned the San Diego Padres since 2012, is on the brink of selling the Friars for a mark of some $3.9 billion, as Jared Diamond and Miriam Gottfried of the Wall Street Journal revealed on Friday morning. The buyers are reportedly private equity boss José E. Feliciano
and Kwanza Jones, his wife, with the deal expected to close soon.
Feliciano is the founder of Clearlake Capital, who also is seriously invested in Chelsea of the English Premier League, so this is not their first foray into the world of sports at the most expensive of levels.
The Padres selling for such a high-water mark is a precedent setter for the sport of baseball, especially in the wake of the Minnesota Twins failing to sell just last fall. The Twins were reportedly on the market for some $1.7 billion before being pulled, though that club was saddled with a pile of debt that significantly altered their would-be top-end valuation.
San Diego has become a unique spotlight for the sport of baseball since the Chargers moved north to Los Angeles. Its weather is divine, obviously, but it’s a unicorn in that it’s a 3.3 million person metropolitan area with no NFL, NBA, or NHL team to compete with the Padres with only the NWSL San Diego Wave and San Diego FC of the MLS as other pro sports draws. That has led to the Friars being hands down the most recognizable, marketable brand in that corner of southern California, and the draw they have keeps Petco Park packed just about every single home game of the season.
Last year, for instance, the Padres drew over 3.4 million fans to their home games. That was second only to the Los Angeles Dodgers (more than even the New York Yankees, at 3.392 million). The Cincinnati Reds, for reference, drew 2.17 million during one of their more successful seasons in over a decade.
It remains to be seen what this sale of the Padres will do to other ownership groups, but it’s hard not to wonder who thinks they might be able to cash-in on a sale next. There’s certainly one group I can think of who should seriously ponder the concept, though…
