In recent years, we have seen a lot of changes in team ownership. Just in the sport of baseball, we have seen the Orioles, Rays, Padres, and now the Angels change hands in recent years, with both the Nationals and Twins also exploring sales before pulling back. Spectator sports, especially the major ones, are big business, and we are seeing an unprecedented number of owners cashing out. If one major investor gets their way, the Atlanta Braves will join that growing list.
As one of the two MLB teams that are publicly traded along with the Blue Jays, how lucrative the Braves have been on the business side has been very well documented. In fact, between the Braves' success as well as the valuations that these other MLB teams have received upon being sold, one major Braves investor, Breach Inlet Capital Management, is making a strong public push for Liberty Media to sell the Braves, according to a report from The Athletic's Evan Drellich.
While the timing as of now doesn't make perfect sense, that does not mean the idea doesn't have some merit, nor does it mean that the Braves being sold in the next few years couldn't very well happen.
Effort to get Liberty Media to sell the Braves actually has merit, although the timing is questionable and the consequences could be severe
Let's start with why Liberty Media should sell the team. For starters, they have already realized a hefty profit on their initial investment. While we don't know exactly how much the Braves would get on the open market, odds are very good that they would get more than the Padres ($3.9 billion) and Angels received ($4 billion valuation). As Breach Inlet's Chris Colvin also pointed out, the impending lockout could hurt the value of baseball's brand, and the Braves are about to have to pay roughly $20 million a year after a new tax law that applies to publicly traded companies' payrolls goes into effect.
However, don't expect the Braves to get sold anytime in the immediate future. Liberty Media's John Malone has shown little indication that he is looking to move the Braves as an asset, and the team has signaled to Colvin and others pushing for a sale that they feel as though selling before the team's national media contracts go into effect around 2029 would be missing out on some real value in the market.
For Colvin, the risks of waiting outweigh the rewards of waiting for the Braves' new media money to get locked in, and reasonable people can disagree on the timing here. However, Colvin does make some good points in Drellich's piece. Losing $20 million a year because of new taxes could be very painful. If the lockout does last well into the 2027 regular season, baseball teams WILL lose value as fans turn on both sides. This is the entertainment business, and if you aren't putting a product out for people to watch, they will go elsewhere and may never come back.
One potential way to alleviate some of Colvin's concerns would be to take the Braves back private to avoid the tax issues and associated scrutiny. However, that would take time, and the team hasn't signaled that that is even being considered. For now, expect the Braves to stay the course, although things could easily change if the tax bill starts to take a toll and the potential return is too good to pass up.
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