Reports say the Angelos family has agreed to sell the Orioles.
As first reported by Sportico and John Ourand of Puck News, the Angelos family plans to sell the Baltimore Orioles to a group led by David Rubenstein from the Carlyle Group and Mike Arougheti of Ares Management Corp.
Andy Kostka, Pamela Wood, and Danielle Allentuck in the Baltimore Banner say that other people, such as baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr., will have minor ownership roles.
The Orioles and MLB have not yet said anything about the news. The deal can’t go through until the league agrees to it.
Longtime O’s beat scribe Dan Connolly tweets that the owners will talk about the sale pact at a meeting they already planned for next week.
In December, it was said that Rubenstein, who is from Baltimore, was present in talks to buy the club. If the deal goes through, Rubenstein is going to end up in charge of the franchise.
There won’t be a full sale of the franchise right away. Ourand says that the Rich group will buy about 40% of the company’s ownership at first.
Once longtime owner Peter Angelos, who is now 94 years old, dies, the rest of the Angelos family’s share will be given to someone else.
According to earlier news reports, the family would have to pay a lot of capital gains taxes when they sold the whole franchise before Peter Angelos’ death.
It’s news that could change the Orioles’ franchise and the lives of their fans. The club has been owned by the Angelos family since 1993. At that point, Peter Angelos was the main investor in the group that bought the O’s.
His aortic valve failed in 2017, and he died. This meant that his wife Georgia and sons John and Lou had to take on bigger roles.
Ourand says the price is expected to be $1.725 billion, which is about 10 times what the Angelos family paid for it in 1993, which was $173 million.
The Baltimore Orioles have been owned by John Angelos and his family since 1993. John Ourand of Puck reports that the Angelos family has agreed to sell the team to David Rubenstein or Mike Arougheti for $1.725 billion.
According to Ourand, Rubenstein as well as Arougheti will buy 40% of the club at first and then the rest after Peter Angelos’ death.
There is no set date for when the deal will officially close, but it is likely to be talked about at the owners’ meetings next week in Orlando, Florida.
The club’s “control person” in Major League Baseball will be Rubenstein, who is from Baltimore.
This is a fancy word for the team’s main decision-maker. Reports say that Rubenstein has wanted to buy the Orioles since at least December of last year.
It turned out to be a busy month for the Orioles, as they rushed to sign a new lease with the City of Baltimore before the official deadline on December 31. Because of that deal, the Orioles will stay at Camden Yards for a while.
The Orioles were bought by Peter Angelos from Eli Jacobs, a venture capitalist, for $173 million in 1993. In the past few years, Peter lost the ability to act, so his son John took over as the face of the franchise.
There were a lot of problems during John’s time as head of the organization. Besides the rent talks mentioned above, John’s brother Louis also sued him and his mother Georgia.
Even though the case was over last year, Louis said that John wanted to move the Orioles to Nashville, Tennessee as part of the suit.
The magazine Forbes says that Rubenstein is worth about $3.7 billion. An investment company called The Carlyle Group has him as a co-founder.
He said earlier this week that he would be leaving the Kennedy Center’s advisory board in January of next year.