Tony Plate - Is Cohen Back in The Picture as The Buyer?

                                               

                                         

Steve Cohen, who owns a small percentage of the Mets may be back in the picture as a buyer of the team. He is expected to bid on the team this week. His presence can make things more interesting during the current bidding process as A-Rod and others are supposed to get back to the Wilpons’. Cohen hopes to have better luck this time since his offer to purchase eighty percent of the team for 2.6 billion, unfortunately fell through back in February.

The problem was that Cohen grew concerned about not having control over the direction of the franchise and you can’t blame him. If you’re going to invest that much money into a team you would expect team control over the direction. If there is a deal, hopefully, the two sides can patch up their differences over the amount of control the Wilpons’ would retain, which caused the deal to fall through in the first-place.

The situation has been a soap opera with different potential buyers coming close, but having the deal fall through at the end. The Wilpons’ have been hoping to find a buyer and they may have to go down on the price if they want to find a taker. In my opinion, what’s making it hard for them to make a deal the most next to the pandemic situation is they really don’t want to include SNY as part of the deal, which was the case with Cohen back in February.

The Wilpons’ recently were thinking about including SNY in the deal when they thought Harris and Blitzer would be the buyers, who would have merged their other franchises onto one huge regional sports network, which would have brought in a good chunk of revenue offsetting the massive operating loss of the team.

Now that times are very tough and the Mets financial picture deteriorating rapidly, the potential buyers can leverage the situation to buy the Mets for the lowest possible price. The situation has taken it’s toll on the Wilpons’ and in my opinion, they should include SNY and not insist on having control if Cohen does buy eighty percent of the team. When you lose that much money sometimes you have to part with an asset that you really don’t want to give up. I would like to see a deal done once and for all.