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Steve Cohen finalizes record deal to purchase Mets - New York Post
Sep 14, 2020 2 mins, 20 secs

Now it is up to the 29 other major league owners to decide whether Steve Cohen will be the next owner of the Mets.

The hedge fund billionaire reached a deal Monday to buy the Mets for between $2.4 billion and $2.45 billion, the highest price ever paid for a North American sports team.

“I am excited to have reached an agreement with the Wilpon and Katz families to purchase the New York Mets,” Cohen said in a statement released by the team.

The next hurdles for Cohen are for him to be vetted by an ownership subcommittee that will then make a recommendation to the larger group whether to accept Cohen into their club.

A vote of all owners is expected to come before November and Cohen would need 23 yeses to succeed Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz and become the fourth controlling owner since the franchise’s inception in 1962.

However, money often wins out and Cohen is worth roughly $14 billion and the record price paid — particularly amid a pandemic — is going to be enticing to other owners who know the value of one franchise impacts all the others.

The Mets have had multiple conversations with fellow owners giving them confidence Cohen will gain approval, a source close to the situation said.

Multiple sources say the deal does not include the Mets television network, SNY.  There was speculation that Cohen might try to include the network in late negotiations, but that appears to not have occurred.

Based on the new math of Cohen owning 95 percent and the Wilpons retaining 5 percent, the minority owners are assuming they are being bought out.

Based on the price Cohen is paying, there will likely be little resistance.

Cohen had previously reached an agreement to buy 80 percent of the Mets for $2.6 billion, but that deal fell apart last February over disputes including how much input and influence the Wilpons would continue to wield during a five-year interim period after the sale.

The Mets were then put up for auction.

The sources said the firm running the auction, Allen and Company, became concerned that the A-Rod group would make that decision public and that would move Cohen to lower his bid.

However, despite the anger the Wilpons harbored from the initial sale falling through, they never flinched and stuck with finalizing a deal with Cohen?

Cohen, who already was a limited partner who owned 8 percent, will now get 95 percent of the team, as long as the other owners vote him in

Cohen’s current deal is for hundreds of millions less than the terms he initially walked away from, leading one Wall Street insider familiar with Cohen to say, “The pandemic helped lower the price

Now it is just up to the other owners to see if that is actually what Cohen would do with the team

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