CHICAGO — After a high-profile pursuit of Chelsea, and with Liverpool and Manchester United both up for sale, Chicago Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts signaled his family is not preparing for a major acquisition of an iconic soccer club that could potentially distract them from the iconic baseball team they already own.
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“On the Premier League stuff, the answer is no,” Ricketts said during Saturday’s Q&A session with fans at Cubs Convention. “Anything that we would do — and we have a lot of other investments as a family — would have really no relationship to the (Cubs) at all.”
The consortium led by Ricketts, hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert ultimately withdrew from Chelsea’s complicated sales process last year before the final round of bidding. Ricketts had previously explored a deal for Chelsea back in 2019, meeting with Roman Abramovich at a time when the Russian oligarch was not under pressure to sell the club. Amidst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the British government’s sanctions against Abramovich, Chelsea sold for more than $5 billion to a group led by Todd Boehly, a co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Ricketts, whose lasting achievements with the Cubs include the end of a 108-year World Series drought and the $1 billion renovation of Wrigley Field, viewed Chelsea as another once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. For Ricketts, it would be hard to identify another soccer club with a global brand, a prime location and a personal connection. Even then, it would be a time-consuming process that would invite more scrutiny from the international media and a skeptical fan base abroad. At this moment, there aren’t that many untapped opportunities or new ways to modernize a Premier League club. The landscape has seismically changed since the owners of the Boston Red Sox bought Liverpool for $476 million in 2010.
“I’m a Chelsea fan,” Ricketts said. “I used to go to London all the time and I had an office there, just a few blocks from Chelsea’s stadium. For me, it was something that I thought would be a really exciting thing to take a look at. Obviously, we ended up not doing it. But when you hear or read about other things the family’s doing, I think you can be comfortable that none of the resources are being taken away from the Cubs to fund any of that.”
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It still creates a perception issue when a big-market franchise is undergoing another multiyear rebuild. But Ricketts has full confidence in president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer, who made the difficult decisions to break up the core of the 2016 World Series winner, working around the budget cuts during the COVID-19 pandemic to restock the farm system, give opportunities to young talent and make pitching and defense the team’s new identity. Signing All-Star shortstop Dansby Swanson to a seven-year, $177 million contract changed the vibes around this fanfest at the Sheraton Grand Chicago.
Ricketts is never going to operate like Steve Cohen, the New York Mets owner who was willing to carry close to a $500 million payroll this year until the Carlos Correa deal collapsed during the free agent’s medical review. After the Cubs lost 179 games across the last two seasons with a middle-of-the-pack payroll, Ricketts indicated that the team will again be spending around the level that triggers the competitive balance tax (CBT) this year ($233 million). Ricketts had a wry response when a fan mentioned Cohen’s free-spending approach and asked if the money generated from the new Wrigley Field sportsbook would be poured back into the major-league roster.
“Well, I certainly wish that the sportsbook would give me the kind of money that Steve Cohen has,” Ricketts said. “Ultimately, those dollars do get through to payroll. If you look at our payroll this year, we will be very close to the CBT. You have to be thoughtful about how you manage around the competitive balance tax. There are some financial penalties, which are relatively modest in the first couple years. But they go up over time and you can lose access to amateur talent, draft position, and a few other penalties for staying over the CBT for too long. So the way you look at it, you have to manage toward it. And then when you’re going to go over — like we did a few years ago — you just have to be strategic about it.
“We know that we’ll have the financial resources to put a really competitive team on the field. There will be years where it makes sense to maybe stretch those resources and go a little deeper in the CBT and pay those penalties. We’ll just have to take advice from Jed on how he wants to manage that. But believe me, we know that it takes money, and we know we want to put a lot more money on the field to win.”
While Ricketts announced the Cubs will build a statue for Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg outside Wrigley Field, Sammy Sosa remains persona non grata at the Friendly Confines. Ricketts said there was “nothing new to report” on the organization’s frayed relationship with Sosa, the franchise’s all-time leader with 545 home runs and a reclusive personality compared to all the Cubs alumni who routinely show up in spring training, for convention events and at Wrigley Field.
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The Cubs have turned over almost their entire organization since Sosa’s 13 seasons on Chicago’s North Side (1992-2004), a period that predates the Ricketts family’s purchase of the team from Tribune Co. According to a New York Times report published in 2009, Sosa tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003 as part of Major League Baseball’s survey testing that was supposed to remain anonymous. Sosa testified in front of a Congressional committee in 2005 that he never used illegal performance-enhancing drugs.
“There are two sides here,” Ricketts said amid a brief round of boos. “Look, everyone can have an opinion on it, but obviously the Hall of Fame voters believe there’s two sides to this story. I know there’s a lot of fans that have reached out to me directly that believe there’s two sides to this story. I’d like to get it behind us as well. But I just want to be thoughtful about it and do it in a way that’s respectful of both the people that love Sammy as a player, as I did, and people that respect the game, too. I think there’s a balance in there somewhere, and maybe we’ll find that at some point. I don’t think the final chapter is written on this, and we’ll always be open-minded to finding a way that works for everyone. But for the time being, I don’t really have any updates on it.”
(Top photo of Tom Ricketts: Kamil Krzaczynski / USA Today)
Source: https://theathletic.com/4091959/2023/01/15/cubs-tom-ricketts-premier-league-sammy-sosa/
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