Rogers being forced to sell Blue Jays - HNIC in trouble

Hey SHAD KAHN..
JAX needs a new team the Jays would fit in well and we won't WINE AND CRY because we have other leagues playing in our city and country...

Take em. They are all yours. Good riddance.

If selling the BJs means Rogers makes enough money from this to pass some savings onto me as a subscriber to cable, phone and Internet with Rogers, I'd be a very happy camper. Or at least help keep my costs from not rising. Maybe it's time I really do get tired of my money subsidizing a part of Rogers business assets that isn't performing well and may be costing me more being a customer of Rogers.

Would love it… But wouldnt happen. Won’t save the argos tho.

Fortunately, the Argos don't need saving.

Rogers could make 10x the profits they make right now and your cable bill wouldn’t go down a cent.

I'd say you're dead on with that assessment letsgo. I will say Rogers has responded well to coming to our house and providing service when I've needed it, very timely sometimes the same day. Their online customer chat service is excellent.

Rogers shares are up 26% this year. They are having a banner year. If they get offered what they think they should get for the Jays and get a cash influx of $1.5+ billion from that sale that they could invest in the core businesses of Rogers - they'll sell them.

But they certainly are not in a rush nor in a position where they are being 'forced' to dump the team for below what they perceive the team's value to be.

After reading this, they may not be in a rush either but who knows in light of, as this analyst mentions, the rising payrolls for MLB players albeit there is another opinion offered in the piece below from a sports consulting firm which of course one would expect such a disagreement from:

Rogers and BCE are among investors in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs NHL team and Toronto Raptors of the National Basketball Association. The company’s media business made up about 15 percent of sales last year but only about 3 percent of operating profit, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Edward Jones & Co. analyst David Heger said in a phone interview that selling off some media assets makes sense for Rogers. The media unit’s profit trails that of rival BCE, in part due to rising payrolls for baseball players, he said.

Marc Ganis, president of the consulting firm Sportscorp Ltd., disagrees, pointing to other sales of sports assets that have resulted in lost premiums and broadcasting deals. Fox Entertainment Group Inc. sold the Los Angeles Dodgers for $2 billion, leading to a costly lawsuit for broadcast rights. Rupert Murdoch sold the Dodgers through News Corp. for just $430 million a few years earlier.

“Were I advising Rogers, I would tell them ‘do not sell this asset.’ I’d assure them that the day will come that they regret having done so,? Ganis said. “I do see the values going higher. They’re high now so if they sell now they would sell at a high water mark but not the final water mark.?


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/rogers-evaluating-sale-of-blue-jays-cogeco-stake-cfo-says

No we don’t. As per usual he spouts half truths and lies about a story found in every news outlet and site in the country. He hasn’t broken any news. All he’s done is put his bizarre, often out in left field view on a verifiable story. Again, as usual, there’s no proof to back up what he’s saying.
Rogers is not being forced to sell the Jays. In fact, it may actually strengthen their financial situation and strategic portfolio holdings.

If Rogers can prove or make a strong case the value of the Jays will increase in time to match the profits they would make from selling the team now and investing that in their core services. The problem though is that the players will want increases in salaries if the price of MLB teams goes up and that could negate the increase of the teams. Tricky situation and of course, as in anything, predicting the future isn't easy in the world of corporate finance.

But I don't think Rogers would get any offers that would satisfy them and I think they'll be the owners for quite a while yet. And not getting an offer you are looking for basically does mean you are stuck with whatever unless you are really desperate as some home owners are say in some divorce situations as an example. But Rogers isn't desperate at all, they can easily afford to keep the team and run it with losses for a long time if need be, I think. They are loaded to the kilts. They may just run the team more leanly, that's all. Remember, the BJs are not their core business. If they were then that would be much different. Your core businesses have to make money or else you're eventually out of business.

Yes, you do.

He called this, long ago, and was on the receiving end of jibes from the “Usual Suspects” - a bunch of posters who ran the poor guy into the ground. Turns out Mirage was right.

I’m happy Mirage won this battle.

In case you want to, it is rci.b on the TSX. If you do look at the chart…

You will see that, over the 9 years before the year you quoted, the stock went up ~15%, or an average of less than 2% per year.

So, yes, it is up this year, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Also, Rogers is trading at a Price to Earnings ratio of 17.4 - which is very high. BCE is trading at 12.7. So don’t be surprised if Rogers gives back some of those 1 year gains.

Simply put, Rogers knows the next 5 years will be rough. Old team, high payroll, no where to go but down as far as attendance and ratings. Would they LOVE to unload this junker? Of course. But if you expect anyone to pay anywhere near what you HOPE, then aren’t you naïve.

Sorry Kevin - but you are the one being naive. We're the ones quoting what business and sports property analysts are saying the likely price will be based on what other similar properties have gone for over the last several months.

Somewhere above the $1.2 billion - $1.4 Billion range which the Marlins and Mariners have sold for in the last 18 months or so - teams in much smaller markets with much smaller fan bases than the Jays.

Sorry, Pat, but I’m sure I can find plenty of business people who feel those numbers are high. VERY HIGH!

Blue Jays = Old building, sky high payroll, nothing but downside for the next 5 years, Canadian dollar that could plummet.

Let’s see how many people want to buy the team. LOL.

If you believe Mirage, and I do, the team has been for sale for a while and no one has stepped up. Gee, I wonder why.

As Shi Davidi said on PTS, you can attach any value you want to the Jays, but someone actually has to want to buy them.

As he also said, the only potential buyer at those prices, the Rogers family. LOL.

The problem with a Canadian MLB team though is I think it brings more baggage, if you will, for a sell compared with an American team, baggage in terms of the Canadian dollar, yes, and really making it harder for a potential buyer to want to move the only team in Canada sort of thing, a pulling on the heartstrings of baseball fans all over the country and again, Kevin does have a point with a stadium that is not what is considered the actual shape of what a baseball stadium should be, an outdated shape design in a bowl. Now Jays fans have been very supportive, no question, but will the stadium become an issue particularly if say Montreal lands a team (could it end up being the Jays?) and builds a real cool stadium that isn't bowlish? There are a lot of uncertainties here with the Jays as a Canadian team and this certainly does factor into the equation.

Yes, anyone can put a number on what the team is worth but if no one is touching that number, well then how accurate is the number?

Amen, brother.

The thing you keep conveniently ignoring Kevin is that because of the unique designation of Canada as the Jays 'region' by MLB - the Jays in fact have the largest 'regional' TV market of over 30,000,000 people of any MLB team.

Multiple teams with much smaller 'regional' TV markets have drawn in the $100 million range for their regional TV rights from various regional sports networks in the last few years. At the jaw dropping end of TV rights Time Warner paid over $8 billion for the Dodgers TV rights for something like 22 years which works out to well over $300 million per year. Rogers who lump their Jays ownership in the same division as their media properties - last number available had only credited the Jays with $35 million as the TV rights revenue - which every media business analyst indicated was a VERY low ball number for their true value.

Any new owner will likely get probably triple that for a regional TV deal. Add the $50+ million USD from the US national TV deal and any new owner before they sold one ticket would have close to $150 million in the bank.

They'll get sold if Rogers really wants to sell them. It might take a year or two - and like I said don't be surprised if an American or perhaps even an Asian owner ends up as a potential owner. I don't think there is any requirement the ownership is limited to a Canadian bidder only.

Remember when the Teachers Pension Fund wanted to sell MLSE. It wasn't sold in a few weeks. In fact at one point they pulled it off the market because any of the bids they had received up to that point were not satisfactory. Then over the next year after that move - the deal got finalized with Rogers, Bell and Tanenbaum for $1.3 billion in 2012.

It will likely be a similar process for selling the Jays. They'll entertain offers - most of which we won't hear anything about until there is one in the ballpark of what Rogers feels the team is worth and further negotiations happen at which point we'd likely here rumours about the potential buyers in the media for the first time.

They'll get sold if Rogers really wants to sell them.
Yes Pat your are correct and we'll see what that actual number is along with other aspects of such a deal when it happens. At this point though, it's all speculation.

Now if the Jays were an NFL team where every team is profitable due to how they revenue share etc., they would be a far easier sell.