Financial Benefits Received by Frank McCourt in Dodgers Sale

When the Dodgers were sold last year, the price was an­nounced as $2.15 bil­lion. Gug­gen­heim Base­ball Man­age­ment bought the team and Dodger Sta­di­um from Frank Mc­Court for $2 bil­lion — $1.588 bil­lion in cash and $412 mil­lion in debt as­sump­tion — and paid $150 mil­lion for half-own­er­ship of the land sur­round­ing the sta­di­um. Mc­Court re­tained half-own­er­ship in the land.

However, the deal in­cludes oth­er terms that were not an­nounced. Los Angeles Su­per­i­or Court Judge Scott Gor­don denied Gug­gen­heim’s re­quest to keep those terms secret. As a res­ult, a fin­an­cial sum­mary of the deal — but not the ac­tu­al sale doc­u­ments — has be­come pub­licly avail­able.

The sum­mary ap­pears be­low; the shaded sec­tion con­tains the terms Gug­gen­heim did not want pub­lic. In ad­di­tion to the an­nounced sale price, Mc­Court can sell his half-own­er­ship in the land to Gug­gen­heim for an­oth­er $150 mil­lion or can buy back part of the land in or­der to build a sports ven­ue there.

Gug­gen­heim agreed to in­vest $400 mil­lion in a real es­tate de­vel­op­ment fund run by Mc­Court, for pro­jects out­side the Dodger Sta­di­um prop­erty, with the pos­sib­il­ity of a second in­vest­ment, that one at $250 mil­lion. He also gets half of any profits.

For run­ning the fund, Mc­Court gets an an­nu­al man­age­ment fee that starts at about $5.5 mil­lion. He also gets half of the an­nu­al fee the Dodgers pay to rent the park­ing lots; Mc­Court’s share starts at $7 mil­lion a year.

And, so long as Gug­gen­heim is an in­vestor in the team and/or sta­di­um, Mc­Court gets a free lux­ury suite at Dodger Sta­di­um for the rest of his life.