FORT WORTH, Texas – The bidding war over the Texas Rangers heated up Wednesday as Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan’s group offered $2 million more than Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban’s group, which then upped the ante by $15 million — to about $335 million in cash.
When the auction in bankruptcy court started Wednesday afternoon, a Texas Rangers attorney said Cuban’s group — which includes Houston businessman Jim Crane — had the highest starting bid. The Cuban-Crane bid was about $25 million more than the $520 million bid — including $307 million in cash — submitted by a group led by Ryan and sports attorney Chuck Greenberg.
About two hours later, the Greenberg-Ryan group’s attorney, Thomas Lauria, said his group was bidding $2 million more than the cash portion, about $318 million, of the Cuban-Crane group’s offer.
Then Clifton Jessup, a Cuban-Crane attorney, immediately stood up and said his group was bidding another $15 million for a total of about $335 million in cash — also raising that total bid to about $560 million.
Lauria said the Greenberg-Ryan group needed time to review the new high bid and get clarification on some issues. Bidding was expected to resume later Wednesday, and U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Russell Nelms has said he’s willing to work through the night.
The rare and unusual auction had been delayed about six hours because team attorneys said they were trying to determine the values of each proposal.
During an earlier break, Greenberg told The CHICAGOPRESSRELEASE.COM that the Cuban-Crane bid did not meet certain qualifications when it was submitted before Tuesday night’s deadline. He said attorneys for the team and a court-appointed restructuring officer had been working with Cuban-Crane to revise the bid all morning, which he said was improper.
The auction is the most dramatic development yet in one of the most contentious sales of an American professional sports team. The last Major League Baseball team to be auctioned off in such a way was the Baltimore Orioles in 1993.
The Greenberg-Ryan group had the base bid because it was named as the team’s buyer months ago, before the deal was put in limbo by angry creditors and then by the May filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. If that group ultimately does not win, it will get a “breakup” fee of $10 million to $13 million.
Final approval of the Rangers sale rests with MLB, which has the option of choosing the second-highest bid instead.
A bid from Crane reportedly beat the Greenberg-Ryan offer in the Rangers’ original sale process last year, but MLB was leery of the businessman since his deal to buy the Houston Astros in 2008 fell through. Cuban got negative feedback from MLB when he was ready to pony up more than $1 billion for the Chicago Cubs, which wound up briefly in bankruptcy before Tribune Co. sold the team to the Ricketts family last year.
The Greenberg-Ryan group was announced as the preferred buyer in January, but the sale was stalled by angry creditors who said other bids were higher. Lenders feared they would not be repaid the $525 million in loans that owner Tom Hicks’ financially strapped ownership group defaulted on.
Hoping to push through the sale to the Greenberg-Ryan group, the Rangers filed for bankruptcy but the process has been anything but smooth or predictable.
The judge has said creditors will only get about $75 million from the team but they can go after Hicks’ other companies. Unsecured creditors are expected to be paid the full $204 million owed to them — including Alex Rodriguez, who’s owed $24.9 million in deferred compensation six years after he was traded to the New York Yankees.