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To: justiceseeker93
If you don’t closely follow events west of the Rockies (or west of the Hudson), here are the basic facts about McCourt’s ownership of the Dodgers. McCourt bought the Dodgers from News Corp (Fox Sports) with $150 million he borrowed from Bank of America, $75 million he borrowed from Major League Baseball (MLB) and a $196 million debt package from Fox. That’s $421 million of debt.

After the purchase, McCourt rearranged this debt to his liking. McCourt traded his Boston parking lots to Fox in exchange for forgiveness of some of the Fox debt. Then he caused a Dodger affiliate, Dodger Tickets, LLC, to borrow $250 million to refinance most of the remaining acquisition debt. Plus McCourt cashed in on $50 million of “rebates” from Fox. With this rearrangement, McCourt effectively purchased the Dodgers – for a final purchase price of between $355 million and $371 million – in exchange for parking lots and $300 million (more or less) of debt. By all reports, McCourt put not one dime of his own into this purchase. Moreover, McCourt did not himself have to borrow the money used for the purchase – he got the Dodgers to do it for him.

It’s been frequently reported that McCourt “bought the Dodgers on a credit card”. That’s only half the story. The other half of the story, the more important half, is that McCourt bought the Dodgers on the Dodgers’ credit card.

Extracted from here: http://itsaboutthemoney.net/archives/2011/06/20/commissioner-selig-frank-mccourt-must-go-a-petition/

20 posted on 06/20/2011 3:29:32 PM PDT by La Enchiladita ("Netanyahu's no pansy Republican," says Rush.)
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To: La Enchiladita; All
I knew that McCourt was heavily leveraged when he got the deal to buy the Dodgers, but Selig was apparently happy to invite him into the club, nonetheless. And despite his lavish lifestyle, he has managed to improve the team's financial situation and increase its value. Drawing 3 million plus per year and getting lucrative TV contracts can work wonders.

In all the maneuverings you mentioned above, there is no criminal activity on the part of Frank McCourt.

The bottom line is that he's still financially solvent, unless Selig forces him into bankruptcy by putting pressure on FOX to not honor this new lucrative contract that the parties agreed to. Maybe Selig - and some other owners - are just plain jealous of the value of the new contract?

BTW, up until now, I've thought that Selig was interceding on behalf of Jamie McCourt, who was looking to squeeze Frank for every dollar she could get in the divorce settlement. I thought that Jamie's agreement that she would not oppose the new TV contract would tell Selig not to block it. Now that Selig insists on saying NO, you have a hard time coming up with a reasonable explanation as to what he's doing here. He's looking for trouble and he may just get it in the form of a huge suit.

26 posted on 06/20/2011 4:15:25 PM PDT by justiceseeker93
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