RealGM

How the Marlins swindled Florida taxpayers.

You just know he's as big a criminal as anyone on Wall Street.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=j ... ials082410

The swindlers who run the Florida Marlins got exposed Monday. They are as bad as anyone on Wall Street, scheming, misleading and ultimately sticking taxpayers with a multibillion-dollar tab. Corporate fraud is alive and well in Major League Baseball.

Surely Samson was joking when he called the leak of the Marlins documents and those of five other teams “a crime.” No, the real misdeed occurred when the head of a professional sports franchise misled the public in order to secure money that wasn’t his. When Forbes in 2007 reported the Marlins had the highest operating income in baseball, Samson denied the team profited, saying: “Very often the mistake that’s made is they look at revenue sharing numbers and the team’s payroll and take the difference and see profit without looking at our expenses.”

Well, now we have a look, and it’s clear what happened: The Marlins loaded money into their coffers and held hostage a city afraid of losing a team, then leveraged it into a sweetheart deal like so many teams across baseball during the stadium boom of the last 20 years.

Didnt the union step in and ask the Marlins to raise their payroll?

Its why I have very little sympathy for teams like the Pirates and Marlins. They make money, but they refuse to spend.

Man the marlins are a joke.... i bet there are a lot of balls just under the seat because no one comes to therir games

I'm not exactly sure how accurate that Yahoo article is 100% correct in pinning the entire blame upon the Florida Marlins. I hate to take the side of Jeffrey Loria here but to laud Jeffrey Loria of contributing "only" $155 million (approximately 25% of the cost; not accounting for future value of the debt) and not contributing an extra $50 Mil is laughable.

That Yahoo article isn't looking at the present value of the bonds, but rather the future nominal value of the bonds, assuming a 40-year bond with an interest rate of approximately 4.11% (I'm not exactly sure what the interest rate is, but I worked backwards from the $2.4 Billion total cost to taxpayer amount). Of course the nominal cost to the taxpayer is going to be substantial... they wrote a 40-year bond for christ's sakes! Even if Jeffrey Loria did contribute that extra $50 Mil, the Miami-Dade county and the City of Miami would still have to take out a $429M bond, and the nominal future value of that amount is still $2.1 Billion!

Still further, even if Loria went half-sies on the stadium construction amount (That seems reasonable, since you would assume that a Stadium is really a joint venture between the city and the person that owns the team) Miami-Dade would still have $317M to make up for its share, and taking out a bond with a similar interest rate and length, it'd still be $1.59 Billion!

For crying out loud. This is just a case of where a great business man **** over an entire city because its city councillors were too stupid (and not to mention completely fiscally irresponsible spending taxpayers money in these ways) to figure out that the nominal cost would be astronomical regardless of how much Jeffrey Loria contributed because of length of the bond taken out and the interest rate amounts. It sure as hell didn't help that interest rates and borrwing rates sharply declined after, making the opportunity cost that much more astronomical.

I really hate to be defending Jeffrey Loria like this because there's all sorts of other issues that I hate about him, but to point the blame for the nominal cost to the taxpayer solely on Jeffrey Loria seems ridiculous.

Edit: Just to add on, I just gotta say how stupid it is of the City Councillors to not do a complete due diligence on the Miami Baseball franchise and Jeffrey Loria before entering into this agreement. In any sort of business venture of any sort, you've gotta make sure you've done the due diligence on the other party; especially if you feel that something is up. There's been absolutely no mention of this, and that's why I feel absolutely do not feel sorry for the Councillors (Poor people of Miami-Dade county though....)

Edit 2: I've also got to say this is what's wrong with cities these days. No wonder we hear of so many municipal governments going bankrupt. Fiscal irresponsibility has led to the high-leveraging of cities budgets that we see today. This is just another one of those examples.

Wait, the city of Miami took on $2.4 million dollars of debt for a baseball stadium? Wow I'm glad I live in TO. Our whole municipal debt is only $1 billion more than that... for a government 6 times the size.

I agree with J.Kim. I see this as yet another example of cities doing god knows what to save pro sports teams. Like Glendale trying to save a hockey team. Makes no sense.

And the stink gets even worse.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=j ... ials082810

Fasson is doing a marvellous job exposing these criminals. But I wonder what the broader ramifications will be? What will baseball's next CBA talks look like when the owners try to cry poor? Will NBA and NFL players be less likely to buy into the crying-poor messages being disseminated by their respective commissioners? Would you believe David Stern that NBA teams collectively lose $400 million. (Well, with idiots like Heisley, that may be possible. He may be a moron and a carpetbagger, but he doesn't seem to be pocketing any profits from his basketball adventures.)