Major League Baseball's owners' management council just signed off on a record $3.9 billion sale of the San Diego Padres.
The council is a smaller group of owners that reviews big transactions before the full league gets to vote. Its members include owners from the Mets, the Angels, the Guardians, the Giants and four other franchises.
The full league is set to vote later this year. If it goes through, this will be the most expensive sale in Major League Baseball history.
That vote is the next important step. Once the owners approve, the deal can move toward closing.
The buyers are Jose E. Feliciano, co-founder of Clearlake Capital Group, and his wife, Kwanza Jones. MLB would not comment on the approval.
Feliciano and Jones won the bidding in April. They finished ahead of Dan Friedkin and Warriors owner Joe Lacob.
Several offers came in above $3.5 billion. That kind of competition drove the price up to a record level.
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The Seidler family has owned the Padres since 2012.
Last November, the family announced its intention to sell and hired BDT & MSD Partners to manage the sale. This came amid reports that Sheel Seidler might contest her in-laws for control of the team after Peter Seidler's death.
The sale was not just a business decision. It tied into the question: who would run the franchise after Peter Seidler's death?
San Diego is a smaller media market. The Padres have still made the playoffs often and have drawn strong crowds in recent years.
That combination of winning and fans makes a franchise more valuable no matter where it plays. A smaller market can still produce big revenue when the team is winning and the ballpark is full, and that is the calculation buyers are making.
Steve Cohen set the previous MLB record in 2020, buying the Mets for $2.4 billion.
This Padres deal tops that mark by a wide margin. A record like that draws attention beyond baseball.
The new owners bring serious financial firepower.
Clearlake is a private equity firm, which means it pools money from large investors and uses it to buy companies. It manages more than $185 billion in assets and is the majority owner of Chelsea FC.
Jones is chief executive of Supercharged, a media company. Together, she and Feliciano have a mix of investing experience and media experience.
The big picture: Sports teams are private assets, so you cannot buy a slice of the Padres the way you can buy a public stock. But this sale shows where some of the biggest money in the world is choosing to sit.
There are only so many franchises in professional sports, and they rarely change hands. That scarcity is part of the reason prices keep moving higher.
Feliciano and Jones are not just rich fans. They are investors who manage money at a scale most people will never see.
For fans, this sale is about who will own the team next. For everyone else, it is a reminder that the people with the most money still want to own the things that are hardest to get.
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