Baseball Musings: Orioles Finances

April 16, 2006

Orioles Finances

Peter Angelos claimed Friday that the Orioles lost $15 million in 2005, but Peter Schmuck is skeptical:

I don't know what the truth is, but I do know this. Many years ago, when Angelos came home the conquering hero after paying a record price to keep the Orioles under local ownership, he told everyone who would listen that the team was a public trust and that the club's finances would be an open book.
Too bad for him that we live in the age of the Internet search engine, because I was able to set the way-back machine to Nov. 18, 1993, and pull up this Angelos quote from The Washington Post:

"I expect to be quite open about the Orioles' finances," he said. "I want the media and the public to know the financial picture of the team. I want them to know what the profits are and what the expenses are. I think the more the public knows, the better."

Now, all we get is an angry pronouncement that the club is losing a fortune and absolutely nothing to back it up. Pardon the skepticism, but I seem to recall that the Orioles spent the late 1990s with one of the highest payrolls in baseball and Angelos claimed at the time that the team was breaking even.

Good for Peter to find those old quotes. We'll see how quickly Angelos keeps his word.

Posted by David Pinto at 11:02 AM | Management | TrackBack (0)

Comments

I don't see what is so tough to understand. Most professional sport teams lose money yearly. Everyone thinks that owners make a ton of money from their teams because they are rich. Actually the opposite is true.

Owners make their money in other businesses and that is how they purchase professional teams and are able to subsidize operations.

Owners make huge profits when they sell the team.

Posted by: Dave at April 16, 2006 06:29 PM

There was an interesting play int he Orioles-Angels game today where Javy Lopez hit oen into the stands but was called out at second base (and just credited with a single) for passing the runner ahead of him. I think there had been some confusion because Darin Erstad had jumped up to take the home run away and the ball ended up glancing off of his glove.

Posted by: Adam Villani at April 16, 2006 07:35 PM

I guess it's also worth noting that it's a perennial joke in my fantasy league to massacre the pronunciation of Javy Lopez's name so that it rhymes with "Davey Lopes," with his first name pronounced like "J.V." and the last name being one syllable.

Posted by: Adam Villani at April 16, 2006 08:29 PM

re: Peter Angelos statements on buying the team

I do not believe it is fair to bind an administrator or chair of a team or a CEO or President to statments he makes at the outset before he knows the actual condition of the enterprise.

FDR before he took over as President in the 1932 election campaign said he would cut the budget by 25%. Later he ran record deficit spending.

Lots of owners say one thing and later do another.

If the team is privately owned, there is no obligation to disclose finances to anyone.

Since 1993, there has been a strike and a couple of llabor agreements that have funamentally changed the financial picture of baseball. Also, salaries have soared stratospherically while attendance first dropped then rose.

Right now, attendance at Camden Yards is poor.

Also, Angelos fought a team coming into Washington, DC.

He argued DC would siphon attendance from Baltimore.

Well, it did. Many of the Washington important folks who used to travel to Baltimore for games are now just going to DC for games to avoid the commute, and Camden Yards is suffering.

It would not surprise me if Angelos sells the team to a group who moves the team.

It does not appear to me that Baltimore-DC can support two teams if Philadelphia, Boston or St. Louis, all much larger metro areas, cannot.

I believe him when he says he's now losing money. It's because of the DC team.

--arthur john kyriazis
--philly

Posted by: arthur john kyriazis at April 17, 2006 05:33 PM