Rogers Communications considering selling Blue Jays

(Richard Lautens/Toronto Star)
Any Saudi, Dubai or United Emirate oil tycoons interested in Baseball?

If you believe Forbes, the Blue Jays are worth somewhere around $1.3 billion.

There's no reason Toronto shouldn't be spending like the large market team. Toronto is a bigger city than Chicago (ie. the 3rd biggest city in the US), making Toronto the largest city in MLB that doesn't share its market with another team. On top of which, it has an entire country of 33M as an essentially captive market - for TV and merchandising purposes.

Vegas got a hockey team for $600 million in a non traditional market, not including building of arena and other costs. The LA Clippers sold for $2 billion USD a few years ago. The Maple Leafs alone are worth $1.4 billion and increased 27% year over year. The value of daily live content in an age of streaming and cord cutting is very valuable. In context, 4 billion is just above Rogers Quarterly revenue. Make it USD and you have a sizeable return.

The Blue Jays have twice as many games, fully integrated stadium and facilities, media and broadcasting, a whole country market and it's 2017. The MLSE investment in everything they’ve done has been going well. I would think them taking over some of Rogers share of the team would make the most sense. They have the case and equity to do it. And would increase payroll as well.

When we are talking sports teams for sale this isn't a price matching exercise this is give me the money or don't get your team type of business. Worst case scenario is a conglomerate of buyers lead by a Private Equity firm takes over and looks to either shed and cut expenses or move the team.

On the flip side, individual owners are more likely to go on emotion and give teams a load of money to get better players. That's what's been happening in New York and Boston for decades. Having a large corporate owner seems like a good idea from the perspective of available capital, but they have other lines of business to consider, and in the case of Rogers, public shareholders to consider.

Rogers gets paid either way. Either they get a steady stream of annual income from airing Jays games, or they get a large upfront payment for selling the team. The future profits they would have earned from broadcasting should be included in the sale price (in theory, they're entirely included, in practice at least the majority are).

Choosing to sell the team is more about choosing upfront current revenue instead of spread-out long-term revenue. Plus, they may decide it's a good time to sell while the market for sports teams is hot.

In a perfect world the team is purchased by a deep pocketed, sports fan owner. In reality, it'll just be another corporation that if Canadian, likely won't have the same budget as Rogers. On the plus side, the team is going to be subpar next year so a big budget ain't exactly high priority out of the gate.

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