Hey buddy. Wanna buy a ballclub?
Well of course you do. Assuming that you`re a red-blooded American. Who wouldn`t want his own real, professional ballplayers who would have to bunt and/or hit and run when he (or, yes, she) said so?
But maybe first you should call Bob Freitas or Bob Richmond out in California. Their business is buying and selling baseball teams, but the first thing they might do is try to talk you out of it.
”We had someone call us recently,” Richmond said. ”He was ready to quit his job as a schoolteacher, mortgage his house and borrow money from his folks so he could own a minor-league team. We told him maybe he should consider buying a small percentage of a ballclub, or perhaps becoming an employee.”
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So while the good news may be that it is possible to buy a minor-league baseball team, the bad news is that maybe you shouldn`t. Not, that is, unless you`ve got both some money and some business sense. The sad fact is that, even in the bush leagues, baseball is a business.
And an increasingly profitable one, according to Richmond and Freitas, a somewhat odd couple who run a firm called Baseball Opportunities.
”It used to be mostly local pride; people thought it would be good for their community,” said Freitas, a 70-year-old who for 20 years worked as a field representative for the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, the governing body of minor-league baseball. ”Or a lot of people would retire and want to own a ballclub. Now, more so, it`s a business investment.”
There are teams available. Richmond, a 48-year-old lawyer, said that every year about 15 of the 192 minor-league clubs are sold, and in the nine years he and Freitas have been in business, they`ve played a part in about 40 of the sales.
While some minor-league teams do lose money, most of them don`t. Last year, almost 22.5 million people paid their way into minor-league ballparks, and this increasing popularity plus increasing business sophistication have made the minor leagues a good investment.
Freitas and Richmond said there are two reasons for this, in addition to the general popularity of the game. ”No. 1, the majors are now treating the minors fairly,” said Freitas. ”Second, a lot of young people specialize in sports administration. They`re marketing experts. It`s not like in the old days when they used to just open the gates.”
It was Ohio University that started serious teaching of sports administration, Freitas and Richmond said. Since then, Western Illinois, Robert Morris in Pennsylvnia and other schools have adopted programs in sports administration, graduating a corps of energetic young experts who want to try their hand making minor-league ball a popular and profitable enterprise.
As might be expected in any business that is potentially profitable, this one ain`t cheap. If you thought you could just get a second mortgage and pawn your watch to get the down payment, think again. Not surprisingly, Freitas and Richmond don`t want to give away too many business secrets, but they don`t quarrel with the estimate that it would take about half a million dollars to buy a ballclub.
And that`s in Class A. Double-A or Triple-A teams cost much more, though some Class A clubs in rookie leagues that don`t play a full season might be obtainable for a bit less than $500,000.
If, knowing all this, you`re still intent on buying your own team, here`s how the business works:
Almost all minor-league teams have what is known as a standard working agreement with a major-league team, which picks up one big expense-players salaries-and usually one little one, by shipping old uniforms for second-hand use. That, not corporate loyalty, is why most lower-classification minor-league outfits have the same nickname as their parent club.
That leaves you, the minor-league entrepreneur-to-be, to pay for renting the ballpark, getting your players to road games, buying the bats and balls and paying the nonplaying employees. If you really go big-time and buy a Triple-A team, you may have to pay the player salaries, too.
Most of your money, needless to say, comes from selling tickets. But there`s also revenue from selling advertising on your outfield walls and the scorecards, from selling hot dogs and beer and, if you`re lucky, from radio.
”You may make a profit,” Richmond said. And Freitas, continuing the cautionary tone, said buying a ballclub is ”just like commercial real estate.”
But then, if they really believed that, they wouldn`t be in this business. Richmond, for instance, gave up a perfectly good Oregon law practice to become president of the Arizona Rookie League and join Freitas in their consulting business.
Businesslike they may be. But they know that tonight there will not be a million or so people sitting around and talking about how what they`d really like to do is go into commercial real estate.