John Malone: ​​Atlanta Braves ‘not for sale’

Even though speculation about a potential sale of the Atlanta Braves continues to loom like a bad penny, John Malone has no plans to auction off the club.

During a telephone interview with Sportico, the president of Liberty Media dismissed the idea that the company had considered bringing the franchise to market. “The Braves are not for sale, and the company that owns the Braves is not for sale,” Malone said Thursday. “I would only consider supporting a transaction involving the Braves if it had the full and enthusiastic support of the management team that runs the Braves.”

Neither Braves Holdings President and CEO Terry McGuirk nor anyone else in the upper management echelons have suggested they are interested in selling the club. “They didn’t ask me to do anything involving Braves ownership,” Malone said. “Terry and the guys have done a fabulous job with the Braves, we are extremely proud of the team, the performance and especially the real estate project.”

In addition to building a new 41,000-seat ballpark in 2017, the Braves developed some 2 million square feet of mixed-use space, including a 4,000-seat concert hall, two hotels and a community cluster multi-family residential.

Malone, who has been involved with the Braves since 1987, when he led a consortium of cable companies that invested $568 million (a sum equivalent to $1.57 billion today) in Turner Broadcasting, engineered a spin -off of the Liberty team that was completed. in July 2023. Although talk of a sale remains unfounded, Malone has reached out Sportico after recent remarks from Liberty Media Chairman and CEO Greg Maffei were misinterpreted in the press.

A review of comments Maffei made Tuesday at the Moffett-Nathanson Conference on Media, Internet and Communications supports the notion that the meaning of the executive’s statement — which amounted to a completely evasive “we’ll see” — was exaggerated.

According to Malone, the legalese behind the Braves spinoff prevents him from putting the team on the block. “When we split up the Braves, I personally had to sign a statement to the attorneys stating that I had no intention or intention of selling my interest in the Braves,” he said.

Malone added that the team will likely have to “invest more money relative to the television side of the business” if the RSN model completely collapses.

The Braves are one of five MLB teams that have supported the league’s efforts to emerge from bankrupt RSN Diamond Sports. After negotiations between Comcast and DSG broke down two weeks ago, Xfinity subscribers in Atlanta’s 2.74 million TV households can no longer access Braves games through Bally Sports South.

Already the hottest player in the media industry, Malone is particularly familiar with the rapidly evolving RSN space. This is at least in part because McGuirk, in addition to his duties with the Braves, is the chairman of the MLB media committee..

While it remains to be seen how things play out with Diamond (a confirmation hearing in their ongoing bankruptcy case is scheduled for June 18), Malone isn’t about to end his affiliation with Diamond any time soon. almost 40 years with the club.

“The reality is the team is not for sale,” he said. “And it’s prudent of me not to even engage in those kinds of discussions until the derivative transaction is very old and very cold.”

The Braves generated $37.1 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2024, a 20% increase from the same period last year. Baseball revenue increased 25% to just under $22 million, while the mixed-use development segment grew 13% to $15.1 million. As of Thursday night, the club was 26-14 and three games behind the Phillies in the NL East.

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