Heading into the 2004 season, Frank McCourt bought the Dodgers from Fox. It was somewhat fitting that a real estate mogul would buy a baseball team with pretty much no money down, but that’s exactly what he did. In fact there was some major concerns about McCourt’s ability to grow the franchise with such a large amount of debt and many speculated that it cost the team Vlad Guerrero when he was a free agent prior to signing with the Angels.
Now, McCourt is settling up some of that debt. He’s giving Fox a total of 24 acres of Boston land. In exchange, he’s getting out from under a $145 million loan that he had with the media giant and in addition, they’ll be taking over some of the third party debt attached to the 24 acres of land. That leaves the team with around $250 million in debt. The $145 million loan was originally part of the financing McCourt used to buy the team.
According to McCourt, the Dodgers no longer lose money and this deal won’t really impact the cash flow of the team because McCourt wasn’t required to make a monthly payment on the loan. So it’s hard to say whether this will mean we’ll be pursuing some free agent gems next year or not.
