The sale of the San Diego Padres ends the myth of the poverty of MLB’s small market
On Friday morning, news broke that the San Diego Padres organization has officially been sold. And that news effectively quelled the controversy, controversy, and complaints about market size disparity in modern Major League Baseball.
For more than a decade, the Seidler family, particularly the late Peter Seidler, owned and operated the Padres. And they’ve turned a low-maintenance franchise into a juggernaut. How? By treating the competitive game like a competitive game, and investing heavily in the product on the field.
Now? It has been sold to billionaire José E. Feliciano and his wife Kwanza Jones, owners of English Premier League club Chelsea. For 3.9 billion dollars.
San Diego Padres pitcher Jason Adam (40) throws against the San Francisco Giants in the seventh inning at Oracle Park. (Photos by Eakin Howard-Imagn)
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About $4 billion for a team in one of the smallest markets in Major League Baseball. A team that hasn’t won a World Series, and hasn’t won the National League West in 20 years. That group sold for $4 billion. Just six years ago, Steve Cohen bought the New York Mets for $2.4 billion.
The New York Mets. In New York City. The largest news market in the country. And the Padres just sold 63% more, six years later. This is why all the whining and complaining from small market teams throughout sports is delusional nonsense.
Padres Sale Shows How Much Money Is Pouring Into MLB
What makes this price even more surprising is that the Padres currently do not have a television deal with a regional sports network. While much of the focus and criticism of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ spending practices has centered on their deal with Spectrum, the Padres’ games are produced exclusively by MLB.
A general view of fans in Gallagher Square before the Opening Day game between the San Diego Padres and the San Francisco Giants at PETCO Park. (Brandon Sloter/Getty Images)
Fubo and DirecTV+ carry the Padres “channel,” but for many fans, they are forced to purchase a package of the team’s games through MLB.tv. And they are still worth $3.9 billion.
How is this possible, with teams like the Pirates and Marlins whining incessantly, even though they are raking in huge amounts of revenue sharing dollars? The Marlins play in an even bigger market than the Padres. San Diego County has about 3.4 million people, and the Miami metropolitan area has 6.4 million. However the Padres can use payrolls at or above $200 million, while the Marlins use less than $100 million. Why?
Because the Seidler family, especially Peter, spent money to build a competitive product, they took advantage of the Chargers’ opportunity to move to LA.
Seidler, who had had serious health problems for years, invested in the team in hopes of winning the World Series before he died. They signed big name free agents like Eric Hosmer, Xander Bogaerts, and Manny Machado. They were aggressive in trades, bringing in stars like Blake Snell, Josh Hader, Mason Miller, Dylan Cease, and Juan Soto. They signed key players to extensions, such as Yu Darvish, Jackson Merrill, and Fernando Tatis Jr.
In this photo illustration the Major League Baseball (MLB) logo is seen on a smartphone screen. (Photos by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA/LightRocket via Getty Images)
And what do you know, the fans appreciated the effort. Petco Park is completely sold out, and currently ranks second in average ticket sales per game at 42,395. It turns out that the old adage of spending money to make money is accurate.
This sales price shows that the owners who complain about not being able to compete with the big groups in the market, to put it mildly, are wrong. Money comes into sports, there is a lot to be done when the teams are trying to win. Fans buy tickets if the ownership programs take winning seriously. Fans buy jerseys when they have stars to support. And fans will spend money to buy a package of baseball games if there is a reason to watch.
Instead, we have owners like Bob Nutting in Pittsburgh, who hasn’t signed a free agent to a contract for more than two years in decades. Literally decades. We have the Marlins, who have taken a community of rabid baseball fans, as the electrifying atmosphere at the World Baseball Classic showed, and spit in their face by demonstrating a commitment to spending as little as possible. We have the Milwaukee Brewers, who, while competing, trade every single big-name player they have as quickly as possible to avoid long-term contracts.
But the sale of the Padres shows that despite excuses and gaslighting, the fastest way MLB owners can increase their franchise values is to spend money on players. If you build, they will come.
