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Facility News
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Written by Maury Brown
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Tuesday, 13 May 2008 04:33 |
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 The plan to sell off Wrigley Field separate from the Cubs, Comcast SportsNet Chicago, and Wrigleyville Premium Tickets is no more. Zell has rejected the offer from Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, thus placing the bid for prospective owners of the Cubs will get a complete package. As reported by the Chicago Sun-Times:
Sources said Zell has rejected the state's proposed terms because it relies on a novel and untested financing plan: the sale of individual seats at Wrigley as if they were condominiums. The idea is called equity seat rights and has been advanced by Chicago area business executive Lou Weisbach, who has applied for patent rights on it. Zell, Cubs Chairman Crane Kenney and their advisers have concluded that the equity plan and its tax ramifications would violate both the Internal Revenue Service code and the rules of Major League Baseball, the sources said. They said Thompson's plan called for selling several thousand seats to raise money for ballpark renovations. The purchase of the ballpark could have been covered by state bonds backed by future ticket revenue.
As we advised and reported here heavily, the decoupling of Wrigley Field from the Cubs would have been a negative for potential owners of the Cubs. The financing plan proposed by the ISFA would have used rent payments from the new owners to pay for $400-$450 million in renovations to Wrigley, while Cubs ownership would not be controlling the facility or owning the equity. The sale of all the baseball-related assets that Tribune owns could fetch as high as $1 billion. We recently projected the sale price for all the assets at $725-$880 million. Today, we are resetting that range to $785-$910 million. Read the Business of Sports Network interview with Lou Weisbach of Stadium Capital Financing READ MORE ON THE PROPOSED SALE OF THE CUBS: Tell Us What You Think... Leave your comments on the sale of the Chicago Cubs
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