Clarification

looked like dee tried to bunt but fouled it off…maybe a safety was on
 
I think dee on 3rd with tony up is a better match up

thanks for rubbing salt BT

Robert212–My logic makes sense.  The problem is that you have two big–REALLY, REALLY BIG–facts wrong.

The new owners never–NEVER–denied that McCourt had an interest in the lots.  They have always acknowledged this, from the day the sale was announced.  They acknowledged it in the media interviews after the sale, in all the publicly released documents about the sale, and again at the Press Conference at Dodger Stadium.

What they said–and what is absolutely accurate–is that they (Guggenheim) control everything that happens in the Ravine.  If you own the team, the stadium, and half of an entitiy that owns the parking lots, and then renting the lots from that entitiy, then you absolutely control the stadium.

Second, the new owners never said that McCourt does not get rent.  They said he does not share in the revenue from the parking lots.  That is also absolutely true.  He gets rent.  If no one parks in the lots, he gets the same amount as if the lots are overflowing.  When you talk about revenue sharing or getting a benefit from the lots, that means a very specific thing.  In most stadium rental deals (usually, these days, between a team and municipality)–as well as most large scale commercial leases–the owner gets some participation in the revenues.  A city would get some share of the gate at a municipal-owned stadium, and thus the more fans attend, the more revenue.  That is true of a lot of commercial operations (bookstores on college campuses, for example, where the campus gets a split of the revenue from the bookstore operator).  So when they were being asked does McCourt get revenue from the parking, and they had already put out the information–widely reported on–that the joint venture that owned the lots would get rent from the team, the pretty clear understanding of that question to someone who understands these arrangements is whether that includes a participation in the revenue stream.  And it seems that is what fans wanted to know–so they could decide whether to boycott the lots and deny more money to McCourt, or to go ahead and park at the stadium, which pays for Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw.  And they answered correctly–No.

This got mis-reported because people asking and reporting on this either do not understand the basics of how this business works (and, since they report on OPS and ERA, not EBITDA, that is going to happ), or intentionally mis-represented what was being said to fuel these conspiracy theories.  Kasten took some blame for not making it clear, but that was, at worst, a problem in explaning a business situation to people clearly not operating on the same wavelength.  And I barely blame him–if the news media wants to cover the Dodgers as a business, then send the guys from the business page.  You wouldn’t send Jim Hill to cover the Facebook IPO, why send him to cover the business details of the Dodgers?  If you ask bad questions, you get bad answers.

A final note–I do think that the media has harranged them on this–and that they have answered the questions, and are rightly annoyed.  Espescially since they were getting asked business questions by sports reporters who did not have the business foundation to ask and report on this.  My Star Chamber reference was a point of dramatic exageration.  I have done this a couple of times on this board, and assumed that people would understand that such a statement is intentionally over-the-top just to make the point–obviously, getting questioned by even a rabid media on a beautiful Southern California day at Dodger Stadium has no comparison to being locked in a room and interrogated and tortured for hours with late-medieval instruments.  Can’t we be a little colorful here from time to time?

Robert212, your logic is irrefutable and the clip you provided clearly illustrates that this ownership group is being far from transparent and honest. Simply put, they are lying. Characterizing the media asking legitimate questions that people want answered as “haranging” is laughable. These are big boy businessmen involved in a multi-billion dollar transaction. They should be able to handle some pointed questions.