Thursday, June 17, 2004 | 9:29 a.m.
In February, former New England Patriots wide receiver Randy Vataha officially joined a deep roster of national figures who are involved with the potential relocation of the Montreal Expos to Las Vegas.
As president of Game Plan LLC, which he describes as a boutique investment bank that specializes in sports-franchise transactions, Vataha has facilitated deals involving the Boston Celtics, Los Angeles Dodgers and Ottawa Senators.
Vataha, 55, was hired by Teamscape president Lou Weisbach to coordinate the search for potential Expos owners. Should Major League Baseball move the team to Las Vegas, Vataha said plenty of suitable, and salivating, buyers will want to make a play for the franchise.
"I think it's gone extremely well," Vataha said Wednesday from Game Plan's headquarters in Boston. "There's great interest. We're not worried about having somebody who would be ready to step up.
"Obviously, there are a lot of issues, in terms of what the price would be, etc. Baseball will want to get the best (deal) it can. Right now, we're just optimistic that, hopefully, they'll select Las Vegas. If they don't, you know, that market's only growing."
Forbes magazine tabs the value of the Expos at $145 million, a 29 percent increase from 2003. The Washington Post, among other sources, estimated that MLB will seek at least $200 million for the franchise.
Baseball's 29 other owners are running the Expos for a third season, at a reported cost of about $1 million per owner, per year. Those owners hope to recoup those losses in the sale of the team.
Additional millions could be earmarked for the pockets of Peter Angelos, the Baltimore Orioles owner who did not hint until last Friday that he could be appeased, in any way, of another team being placed in his general vicinity.
Washington, which has been battling several sites in Virginia, Portland, Ore., and Vegas for the team, has been considered by many sources to be the leader in the Expos sweepstakes since the end of a quarterly owners meeting in New York four weeks ago.
Last weekend, the Angelos family bought Rosecroft Raceway, a harness racing track in Prince George's County in Maryland, for $13 million. The family, according to the Post, plans to build a resort, featuring a hotel and slot machines, on the track property.
Teamscape and Manhattan-based Las Vegas Sports and Entertainment (LVSE) LLC, whose objective is to assemble the financing for a $420 million, retractable-roof stadium behind Bally's and Paris Las Vegas, are the two entities working on the Las Vegas Expos project.
MLB commissioner Bud Selig plans to make a decision on a new home for the Expos, for next season, by the mid-July All-Star break.
Vataha said confidentiality agreements prohibit him from revealing any possible owners of a major league team in Las Vegas.
"We have a lot of clients who have said, 'I'm ready to buy a sports team. When a deal with (certain) elements surfaces, bring it to me and I'll be ready to go,' " Vataha said.
"We've gone as far as we can. We're very comfortable that there are a number of buyers who would be acceptable to baseball, who would be ready to step up if (Las Vegas) is awarded the franchise."
Vataha majored in political science at Stanford, then played in the NFL, mostly with the Patriots, from 1971-77. He caught 188 passes, for 3,164 yards and 23 touchdowns, in his career. Afterward, he opened a fitness club in a Boston suburb that, five years later, grew into a chain of 10.
In 1982, he and a partner started a United States Football League team in Boston, then moved it to New Orleans. Vataha wrote about the details of that move in "The Greatest Sales Stories Ever Told," in which Roger Staubach, Bill Bradley and Ronald Reagan, among others, recounted art-of-the-deal type vignettes.
Vataha's "The Superdome Deal" appeared in Part V.
"I went down to New Orleans one day to talk to the president of the Superdome, and I didn't come home," Vataha said. "I stayed through the weekend to negotiate the deal. In the (story), I walk (readers) through that deal.
"You don't promise stuff you can't deliver. People think you have to be really slick and mislead people into making every (deal), but you can do it the right way. It's about doing your homework and having confidence. A good deal works for both sides."
After his spell in the USFL, Vataha hooked on with Bob Woolf Associates, a prominent sports management firm based in Boston and now run by Woolf's son, Gary. Vataha represented the football wing of the company, which counted quarterback Joe Montana as a client.
His depth of knowledge on both sides of the game enabled Vataha to start Game Plan, with Robert Caporale, in 1993. BostonFleet, which has lent millions to MLB, is a Game Plan partner.
Until coordinating deals for the Celtics, Dodgers and Senators, Vataha and Caporale had mostly focused on the buying and selling of minor-league baseball teams. They helped Boston-based Frank McCourt buy the Dodgers from Australian media baron Robert Murdoch's News Corp. last year.
At the end of last summer, Game Plan's three-year retainer with the Portland Baseball Group, which is trying to lure the Expos to the Rose City, ended. State legislation approved the potential use of $150 million in public taxes, for a new ballpark, in August.
"I'm proud that we really were the guiding force to getting the (public financing)," Vataha said. "Our agreement expired on the last day of (Oregon's) Legislature."
That gave Game Plan valuable background with specific details and personnel involved in the Expos' situation.
"We're pretty heavily involved in Major League Baseball anyway," Vataha said. "That's almost all we do, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But, yes, we know the issues and what's going on, in terms of purchasing the Expos. I think we're pretty well-versed on that.
"If nothing else, we're in a position where we can be relatively select in which assignments we want to take on. Something like Las Vegas was really a unique opportunity for us, a whole different kind of market."
He said the combination of the city's growth -- its current population of 1.6 million has roughly doubled since 1990 -- and a tourism industry expected to attract more than 36 million to Las Vegas this year make it an intriguing market.
Vataha and Caporale communicate regularly with potential owners who might get an opportunity to tap into that market.
"This is one that has absolutely generated tremendous interest," Vataha said. "For someone looking to own a sports team, to be the first owner of a major sports team in Las Vegas is a very attractive moniker. This would be a real quality transaction.
"We would have all the confidence that, in a very short amount of time, we would have a buyer."
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