Menu
Download the app

SBJ subscribers – Enhance your experience with the revamped iOS app

Year In Review

Best Deal: Steve Cohen Buys the Mets

Steve Cohen with his wife, Alex.Courtesy of New York Mets

When Major League Baseball owners voted in October to approve Steve Cohen’s purchase of the New York Mets, it marked a momentous occasion for the billionaire hedge fund manager, the chronically underachieving franchise and the league overall.

 

For baseball, it welcomed the wealthiest owner in the sport — Cohen’s fortune from his well-pubicized career as a hedge fund titan is estimated to be some $15 billion — in the nation’s largest market to take over a chronically underachieving franchise with a record price tag for an MLB team. Cohen, 64, paid $2.4 billion for 95% of the Mets; the Wilpon and Katz families will retain 5% of ownership. The deal eclipses the $2 billion sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers to Guggenheim Baseball Management in 2012. 

For the Mets, having Cohen at the controls is already making the team a more desirable place to play. He has promised to operate the Mets “like a major market team,” a signal that he will boost the club’s payroll. He has also boosted enthusiasm around the team, which has not won a championship since 1986. Fans were thrilled by his introductory press conference, in which he said, “If I don’t win a World Series in the next three to five years, I would consider that slightly disappointing.”

$2.4B


Price paid by Steve Cohen for the Mets, a record for a Major League Baseball team.

Among his first moves was to bring back Sandy Alderson, who is now team president after serving as the club’s general manager from 2010-18, and the team’s first free-agent signee since Cohen took over, pitcher Trevor May, credited the “buzz” around the new owner as a factor in his decision to head to Queens. 

The deal was also deeply meaningful for Cohen, who grew up a Mets fan in Great Neck, N.Y., and had purchased an 8% limited partnership stake in 2012 for $40 million. He was in talks last December to acquire up to 80% of the team before that deal collapsed. This summer, when the team was put on the market again, Cohen blew away a field of competitors that included Philadelphia 76ers owner Josh Harris’s Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment and a group led by Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez. 

With his deep pockets, Cohen came away with his boyhood team and a clear goal for what he plans to do with it.

“I’m not trying to make money here,” Cohen said. “I have my business at Point72, and I make money over there. So here it’s really about building something great, building something for the fans, winning.”


SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2020/12/14/Year-in-Review/Best-Deal.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2020/12/14/Year-in-Review/Best-Deal.aspx

CLOSE