New York Mets Baseball Team Sold to Investor Steve Cohen for $2.4 Billion

By Paul Riegler on 14 September 2020
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Mets outfielder Curtis Granderson at bat

The owners of the New York Mets announced that the team would be sold to billionaire investor Steve Cohen, who will become only the fourth controlling owner of the beloved franchise since its inception in 1962.

The price tag, $2.4 to $2.45 billion, is a record for a sports team. The previous record was $2.275 billion for the Carolina Panthers, an American football team, purchased by another hedge fund billionaire, David Tepper.

“I am excited to have reached an agreement with the Wilpon and Katz families to purchase the New York Mets,” Cohen said in a statement released by the Mets.

The creation of the Mets, a Major League Baseball team, was a response to the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants to the West Coast after the 1957 season. The National League, responding to the threat of a new third Continental League that was being formed by William Shea, expanded by adding the New York Metropolitan Baseball Club following a proposal by William Shea, who was a founder of the proposed Continental League and who was the namesake of the stadium in Queens where the Mets played for 45 years.

The Mets took the blue of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the orange of the New York Giants as its colors and soon acquired the nickname the “Mets,” which also recalled the New York Metropolitans, a team in the American Association in the 1880s.

Contingent on the approval of Major League Baseball’s 30 owners, or at least 23 of them, Cohen will acquire 95% of the team from its current owners, Saul Katz and Fred Wilpon, who will retain 5%.

(Photo: Accura Media Group)

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