West Coast Living and the $2 Billion Dollar Deal

Now that the dust has settled, it appears Magic Johnson and friends overpaid to acquire the Los Angelse Dodgers by about $1 Billion. Forbes recently evaluated the Dodgers as a franchise worth $800 Million. A new TV deal appears emminent for the boys in blue, so let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say that's worth $500M. It's not, but to be fair, we'll give them that much. So now we are at $1.3B, tops. And they sold for $2.1B.

Something is wrong here. Steve Garvey, one of the losers in the LA Dodgers bidding sweepstakes, said the math just doesn't add up. He says at the most, on a crazy day, the Dodgers are worth $1-1.3B, but that's it.

And so with the deal going through, it's now safe to assume, Frank McCourt won't be visiting the poor house anytime soon. McCourt just made $1B in this deal and still owns much of the parking lots around Dodger Stadium. Like fictional Wall Street character Gordon Gekko says, "Greed is good."

Another thing that is certain, besides McCourt laughing all the way to the bank, the NL West just got a whole lot more interesting. The Diamondbacks, Giants and Dodgers are all going to be very good. And the West Coast is suddenly baseball's hot bed with the AL West stacked. The Texas Rangers, Los Angeles Angels and Oakland A's all much improved. Even the Mariners look like a better team.