Meet your new owner of the Padres, looks a lot like your old owner of the Padres, John Moores.
Jeff Moorad, his sleepy eyes and booming voice is now out-out as the owner of the Padres. Barry Bloom over at MLB has an interview up with John Moores about the now non-existent ownership transfer and some very interesting nuggets, including the fact that the 2 years that were still left on the purchase contract is now null and void. There is no purchase of the team currently happening.
In news that everybody's been dying to hear, Moores says the TV deal with Fox is up and approved and worth $1.2 billion with a $200 million up front bonus. Padres receive (not earn in equity, Bob Nightengale) $50 million a year from Fox Sports. Moores owns 51% of the network of the Padres' share in the new network. No word on what Moorad will do with his represented stake in the team or stake in the network.
The average of $50 million a year make the Padres a mid-market team according to Bloom, though that's just because the deal is the most current. As deals expire and negotiations look at this (and the pending Dodgers deal), our deal is likely to get dwarfed, but for now...
WE'RE RICH (and by "we" I mean, John Moores)!
In Moores' conversation with some of the minority owners, he paints them in the light that they've painted themselves in:
"It was mostly about whether they'd still have their tickets for the games and that kind of stuff," Moores said. "Of course I told them yes. Do they want to stay involved? I'm not sure. It seems like some of them do and some of them don't."
"Stay involved"? In what way were they ever involved? The guy representing their money got hung out to dry and the only quotes attributed to them in the media are that they still want "tickets" and "that kind of stuff"? Blech.
In any case, we got Moores. It'll be interesting to see if he's on board with the way the front office is being run right now with Garfinkel, Byrnes and company, but he's managed to get through the divorce with a nicely negotiated TV deal, a (presumably) super profitable team, the best farm system in baseball (after years of pathetic) and some scrilla to thrilla.
Incidentally, I don't know if you're still clamoring for a billionaire buyer, but it won't be Marc Cuban. Here's a list of people to start tweeting if you're looking to talk a billionaire into buying the club.
Go Padres.