New Royals Chair & CEO John Sherman's ownership "will be unlike anything Kansas City has seen," as most of the other teams in the area have "been run, basically, by one person," according to Sam Mellinger of the K.C. STAR. Sherman is the leading investor of a group 17 deep and is the one that will be held publicly accountable. But he said that "within the 17 investors are '12 to 14' lead investors, some of whom have people behind them." Sherman said that the executive committee is "'six to eight' people and the largest investors." Mellinger notes the entire investment group is "meeting in the Phoenix area in a few weeks." That is "part of a regular series of meetings throughout the year with financial reports and other information," and that setting will "allow them to see how baseball operations does its thing." Meanwhile, the size of Sherman's group has "raised some eyebrows around baseball." MLB likes to keep ownership groups small, and the "assumption is that Sherman's group expanded out of necessity" to meet not just the $1B purchase price, but also the "yearly operating expenses" of running an MLB team. Former late Owner David Glass said that he "ran the team on a break-even basis." Glass in an interview last fall said in overall yearly operating costs he lost some money -- "but not a lot" (K.C. STAR, 2/25).
