51s up for sale

Nick Christensen

Friday, June 17, 2005 | 9:45 a.m.

Cashman Field 7: 05 p.m. today, Saturday, Monday; 12: 05 p.m. Sunday Radio: all games on 1460-AM (870-AM in Spanish)

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Mandalay Baseball Properties, the majority owner of the Las Vegas 51s, has hired Lehman Brothers to broker the sale of the Triple-A baseball franchise.

Las Vegas general manager Don Logan confirmed this week that the brokerage firm, which helped complete the sale of the Anaheim Angels and Mighty Ducks in past years, will only be paid if a sale happens.

That offers are coming into the 51s front office is nothing new. But since speculation of Major League Baseball coming to Las Vegas increased last year, the 51s became a more valuable franchise, Logan said.

Still, his asking price may be a little high.

A report published last week in the Las Vegas Review-Journal indicated the 51s may be asking for $20 million. The Review-Journal is owned by Stephens Media Group, which is also a minority owner in the 51s.

While the Pacific Coast League does not disclose sale prices, it's believed that up to last year, no PCL franchise sold for more than $15 million. Last winter, Utah Jazz owner Larry H. Miller purchased the Salt Lake Stingers for $20 million.

In March, restaurant owner Abe Alizadeh bought the struggling Portland Beavers franchise for an estimated $7-12 million.

"A lot of people want to believe that the franchises are going to be rated on the basis of the most recent purchase, that that sets a new foundation," said PCL president Branch Rickey. "Until that's proven, we don't know for sure."

Logan declined to name a price for his franchise.

"You don't negotiate against yourself -- we'll listen to anything," he said. "We'd (Mandalay) sell any of our teams. If somebody is willing to buy Frisco and pay a number we can agree to we'd sell that."

Mandalay operates minor league franchises in Frisco, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; Erie, Penn., and Hagerstown, Md. Despite the fact that both Frisco and Dayton average nearly twice as many fans nightly as Las Vegas, the 51s are still considered Mandalay's marquee team.

Rickey said the purchase of Triple-A teams has gone from a trophy purchase to a business investment.

"These tend to be prices that very astute people have made a lot of money by being very practical with their money for a property that will return such an amount of money," Rickey said.

And while the 51s have again become profitable in recent years, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is what most consider inevitable major-league relocation to Las Vegas.

If and when that happens, the major league franchise would have to "draft" the Las Vegas territorial rights, and pay a fee to the minor league franchise that would be determined in arbitration.

Rickey, who was active in the negotiations between the Colorado Rockies and the Triple-A Denver Zephyrs in the early 1990s, declined to disclose what the final territorial rights fee was.

But Logan said Las Vegas' territorial rights would be "well north of $10 million."

Logan also said that part of the reason Mandalay is growing more serious about selling now is the ongoing saga of the state of Cashman Field, built in 1983 and considered outdated. It's essentially the fourth-oldest stadium of the 30 Triple-A ballparks, and in two years will be the third-oldest.

"I think there's a level of frustration about not getting a stadium, getting the right kind of stadium deal done," Logan said. "That was primarily due to the major league situation."

He said that there had been no discussions yet on the possibility of Mandalay taking the profits from the sale of the 51s to construct a new ballpark to lease to the new 51s owner.

Logan also said it'd be unlikely a new owner would be allowed to move the team from Las Vegas.

"The league's not going to not have a team in Las Vegas," Logan said. "The league owns this territory and the league values the Vegas territory very much. It is probably the next major league city. It's just a ways down the road, much further than a lot of people think."

Rickey said it'd be inappropriate to absolutely say that the PCL would keep a team in Las Vegas. But he also said that the city is a key part of the league's schedule.

Because teams fly by commercial jet, schedules are often determined based on the ability of a team to get from one city to another on a given night.

"In our schedule making process, the omnipresent answer to the question 'What do we do with this team now' is we send them to Las Vegas because you can get to Las Vegas from so many markets in which we play," he said. "McCarran and Las Vegas are extraordinarily positive elements to a 16-team schedule."