Braves being sold, its about time

[steamingpile]

Thank god they are finally sold, most of us are sick of time warner nickle and diming us to death letting all our decent players get away with nothing to show for it.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2763502

<b>Braves reportedly sold to Liberty Media Corp.</b>

<i>NEW YORK -- Time Warner Inc. finalized an agreement Monday to sell the Atlanta Braves to Liberty Media Corp. after more than a year of negotiations.

The deal, which values the team at $450 million, was submitted to Major League Baseball for its approval process, two people familiar with the deal said, speaking on condition of anonymity because no announcement had been made and publicly traded companies were involved.</i>

[NightStalker3]

Yep, finally.

[circpro]

Hell of a swap...

Deal to sell Braves finally done; now goes to MLB for OK

By TIM TUCKER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/12/07

Time Warner agreed on terms of a sale of the Atlanta Braves to Liberty Media and sent the deal to Major League Baseball for approval Monday, team president Terry McGuirk told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The breakthrough came after about a year of negotiations between the two media companies on a complex deal in which Time Warner would swap the Braves and about $1 billion for a huge block of Time Warner stock long held by Liberty.

Tax considerations motivated Liberty to do the deal, which is expected to come under close scrutiny from Major League Baseball because of its novel nature. Approval by 75 percent of the MLB owners is required for the deal to close. The approval process could take weeks or months.

"This is a very complicated deal that will take baseball some time to review and consider," McGuirk said in an exclusive interview Monday night. "Until we hear back from baseball, there is nothing further to do."

Asked what he would say to Braves fans who might be concerned about a Colorado-based corporation buying Atlanta's baseball team for tax reasons, McGuirk said: "That is a really good question. My enthusiasm for this deal is the transparent way in which it will affect current Braves management. The expectation is that the entire structure of management will stay in place. [General manager] John Schuerholz and [manager] Bobby Cox and everyone else who operates the Atlanta Braves will operate no differently, and that'll be the magic in this deal."

Time Warner and Liberty declined to comment Monday, but throughout the protracted process Liberty has indicated its intent would be to keep current Braves management, including McGuirk, in place. That could be key to its chances of getting MLB approval.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig said last year that he hoped new Braves ownership would include some sort of local component. McGuirk said "no comment" Monday night when asked if he might have a minority ownership stake under Liberty.

Behind Liberty Media

Liberty is a publicly traded company with vast holdings in the media and entertainment industries. Its holdings include home-shopping network QVC, movie channel Starz Entertainment and, in a recent acquisition, satellite-TV provider DirecTV.

The company is controlled by chairman John Malone, a cable television pioneer who held a major stake in Turner Broadcasting before its sale to Time Warner.

Time Warner put the Braves up for sale in December 2005, and after negotiating for several months with other bidders -- including Falcons owner Arthur Blank and Atlanta real estate executive Ron Terwilliger -- turned its focus exclusively to the negotiations with Liberty in April 2006. The negotiations dragged out because of the difficulty of structuring a transaction within the rules of both MLB and the Internal Revenue Service.

Under federal tax law, the inclusion of an operating asset -- the Braves -- in the deal can make the transaction tax-free, potentially saving Liberty hundreds of millions of dollars in capital gains tax on the appreciation of its Time Warner stock.

Finally, on Monday, the companies got the last of the voluminous terms on paper and moved into the next phase of the process: MLB approval.

MLB president and chief operating officer Bob DuPuy told the AJC by e-mail Monday night that baseball's general counsel, Tom Ostertag, "did receive some papers [on the deal] today."

DuPuy detailed in the e-mail how MLB will process the deal: "It will be reviewed by our office, specifically the lawyers and financial folks. It will then be turned over to the ownership committee, who will meet with the buyers and interview them. Assuming a positive result there, [the committee] will issue a report to the [30] clubs. And then the Executive Council and clubs will review and vote in that order."

How long now?

As for how long the process might take, DuPuy said: "Depending on the complexity of the documentation, that can be short or long. In the case of Fox buying the Dodgers, it was long. In the case of, for example, David Glass buying Kansas City, it was short."

McGuirk said there is "no way to speculate" on how long the process might take.

Typically, franchise sales are voted on at regularly scheduled meetings of the 30 owners. DuPuy noted that the next such meeting isn't until May, so "given the time of year, it is certainly possible this could be voted on by either conference call or special meeting."

It would not be unusual for MLB to raise concerns that require new issues to be negotiated between buyer and seller.

The only real deadline the parties have been operating under is a coming change in tax law that could require the deal to be altered if it isn't closed by mid-May.