Sale Of Angels Gets Green Light
The sale of the Anaheim Angels from The Walt Disney Co. to Arturo Moreno was approved Thursday, making him the first minority with a controlling stake in a major league team.
Moreno, a Hispanic businessman from Tucson, Ariz., hopes to complete the $184 million purchase of the World Series champions by the middle of next week and take over operation immediately.
"Every guy's dream is to own a baseball team," he said. "It's an opportunity I've always dreamed about."
He doesn't plan any immediate changes for the Angels, coming off the first title for a franchise that started play in 1961.
"I think they have good people," he said. "For me, it's a learning process. I'll sit back and listen."
The Walt Disney Co. bought a 25 percent share of the Angels and took control of the team from founding owner Gene Autry in 1996, then purchased the remainder of the team after he died in 1998.
For Disney, owning two professional sports teams playing just down the street from Disneyland seemed to make good sense in the 1990s.
The buzzword then was synergy, and the entertainment giant figured baseball's Angels and hockey's Mighty Ducks could provide key programming for its proposed sports network, ESPN West, while spawning profitable film, TV and theme park tie-ins.
Other media giants like News Corp. and AOL saw similar opportunities. News Corp., parent company of Fox, bought the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1997 for a then-record $311 million. AOL picked up baseball's Braves, hockey's Thrashers and basketball's Hawks, all in Atlanta, when it acquired Turner Broadcasting as part of its merger with Time Warner in 2001.
But when the economy soured, corporate investors clamored for quick profits, and executives found that owning sports teams required too much time and money.
Now, all those teams are back on the block.
News Corp., which bought the Dodgers for $311 million in 1997, has been talking with Malcolm Glazer and his sons, the owners of the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Bob DuPuy, baseball's chief operating officer, said discussions are continuing but no deal has yet been presented to the commissioner's office for approval.
"Fox, Disney, AOL Time Warner, what they realized was they had trouble running the franchises because it wasn't their core business, and they had trouble with the synergy," said David Brown, president of the Angels before the sale to Disney.
Disney paid $147 million to buy the Angels in two phases ending in 1998 and another $100 million to renovate Edison Field. But the team has lost as much as $16 million a year under Disney, including an estimated $17 million in its championship season.
"Shareholders want to see the stock going up," Brown said. "When you win the World Series, which is the ultimate, but you lose millions, it may be good for the fans but not for the shareholders."
Disney hasn't fared much better with the Ducks, despite this year's Cinderella-like ride in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Disney formed the team in 1993, a year after "The Mighty Ducks" movie hit theaters. Two sequels, promoted heavily through the team, didn't score with audiences.
The team has consistently lost money, an estimated $8 million in 2001 alone, according to David Miller, an analyst with Sander Morris Harris.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought the Dodgers to help build its Fox Sports Network. Derrick Hall, a spokesman for the team, said Fox found limited success. While the network was a winner, the team claims to have lost $100 million over the past two years.
News Corp. intends to retain the programming rights even after the team is sold.
"With News Corp., they had a strategy in mind," Hall said. "They felt like they accomplished it with the success of the sports network."
AOL Time Warner declined to comment on the sale of its three teams. But analysts have said AOL is under pressure to shed sports teams and other assets to reduce a debt of $26 billion.
AOL Time Warner said earlier this month that it was negotiating exclusively with Dallas car dealer David McDavid to sell him its Atlanta basketball and hockey teams.
The fate of the Braves, the most successful and valuable of the three teams, was murkier. Turner Broadcasting continues to negotiate with several interested parties about the Braves, a source familiar with the discussions has said.
No price for the teams was discussed. Analysts say the three Atlanta teams are worth about $750 million.