Mark Cuban: Why we stopped bidding; doesn't rule out future run at MLB team
Mavericks owner Mark Cuban spoke to The Dallas Morning News and SportsDayDFW.com's Brad Townsend this morning via e-mail about the result of the Rangers' auction Wednesday.
Cuban on why he and partner Jim Crane stopped bidding:
"All this came together in less than 3 weeks. Its not easy putting together a ($600 million) deal in that period of time. Jim Crane was a great partner and we had a lot of really smart people that worked hard just to help pull together what we did. But we had a limit on what we could spend."
Cuban on what how the experience compares to any of his many other business dealings:
"...There wasnt a lot of energy in the courtroom. By (9 p.m.) or so people looked like they were going to fall asleep. I was really tired I was feeling really bad because we had bought a bunch of pizzas for our group and hadn't shared any. In fact, I wasnt in the court room when the judge arrived for the next to last bid because I had run back to our room to get whatever pizza and breadsticks we had left to bring out to the people who were hanging around in the halls. When I walked out of our room with the boxes, there was nobody in the halls. That was the closest moment to an adrenaline rush. I was standing in the hall with a bunch of pizza boxes in my arms and had an 'Oh Shoot' moment when I realized they were starting and I was standing there holding pizza boxes."
Cuban on the report that he purchased some of the Rangers' debt and apparently stood to make money either way:
"Does it make any sense to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the team and more than ($1 million) on professional fees in order to try to increase the value of ($2 million) in bonds? Of course not. I don't know who came up with that line of thinking, but I sure hope they don't invest their own money."
Cuban on if this will be his last run at acquiring a baseball team:
"Who knows. We will see."
Cuban later posted more thoughts on his blog Thursday afternoon. Some highlights:
On the Rangers: "I want the Rangers to win the World Series as much as any fan does and I think they have the right people on the field and off to help them do it."
On why he chased the Rangers despite all the negative media attention: "Because I believe it was the right thing to do. This wasn't a spur of the moment thing."
On the auction: "I have to honestly tell you there were more than a few times I thought we had the thing won. They were arguing about everything and anything to knock down our bid. I thought it was because they were out of it. As it turns out, they obviously were not. They beat us fair and square. As a result, I think they are in a better position than when they started the auction . But thats my opinion."
On whether his group would have been approved by the MLB: "At the hearing yesterday it was mentioned that our group only had a 50/50 chance of ever being approved. I tend to never look at the glass as being half empty or half full. I look to see who is pouring the water and to deal with them. Not the media. I am pretty confident we would have been approved."
On why he couldn't bid on the Rangers alone:
"Two reasons. First, despite what people think, I don't keep hundreds of millions of dollars in a checking account. I prefer that it earn money doing things for me. It is not easy to get liquid to the point of $400mm dollars or more in just a few weeks. And in those few short weeks, its not easy to go to the banks and get a loan for a baseball team. Lots of reasons. Some I don't like, but it's not. Second, I didn't have enough time to do all the due diligence my folks needed to do. You don't read every contract and get people to run numbers and advise you on what all the implications of a bankruptcy auction are in a couple weeks. I was paying people to work round the clock. I was killing my General Counsel Robert Hart to the point of exhaustion. There wasn't enough time.
"So a meeting was set up with Jim Crane. I liked him. He had been working on the Rangers for several years. He had all the due diligence in place. His people had scoured the contracts , etc. He had smart people around him and he had his money ready to go as well. Plus he had a relationship with the existing creditors who were willing to loan us money in order to facilitate a competitive auction. Of course the creditors were very self serving. If lending us money helped us, it helped them potentially earn more money from the auction. Together we could put together a bid. As it turns out we could afford a purchase price up to about $600mm dollars. (Right where we left the bidding last night/this morning.)"