Hicks in hock

The Rangers’ financial woes continue:

Amid increased internet chatter Wednesday that Tom Hicks’ sports group – Hicks Sports Group – financial woes are deepening and that the club has borrowed money from MLB’s rainy-day fund, team officials took a strange approach.

They went silent.

The chatter arose Wednesday after a local blog reported hearing on a national radio broadcast the team had borrowed $15 million from MLB to make its most recent payroll obligations and to fund ongoing operations. Asked about the reports, Hicks referred questions to team spokesman John Blake, who said the team would have no comment on the financial situation.

It’s only a matter of time before the Rangers’ become baseball’s General Motors.


8 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
APBA Guy
14 years ago

Waaay back before Trump was TRUMP, he and Ted Turner had leveraged themselves the way Hicks has now. Those two got their lenders to bend over and are the billionaires of legend we know and love today.

Of course, many of their bankers lost their jobs as a result, you can imagine the concern of shareholders when they realized that hundreds of millions had been loaned to Trump without collateral.

So it remains to be seen if Hicks can pull off a similar miracle 20 years later. Doubtful in this climate. And he seems to have fewer friends than Trump and Turner did.

Maybe Scott Boras can lend him some cash. After the A-Rod and Chan Ho Park deals Boras may feel some sense of pity for the man he fleeced so egregiously.

Michael
14 years ago

Heh. Craig, you were looking for a new “America’s Team”?

A government bailout could make that happen for you. Literally.

Michael
14 years ago

Oh, and a side note, Kevin Kennedy may be in deep doo-doo with Selig for mentioning the loan on an official MLB radio show.

He’s now officially backtracked and denies he knows anything. Funny.

Richard in Dallas
14 years ago

If this is what it takes to get that emotionless idiot out of the owner’s box, then so be it.  I just hope that MLB realizes that the Rangers don’t need to be contracted or relocated, they just need someone that’s passionate about the game with deep pockets and the sense to let people that know what they’re doing make decisions.  Start the process, Bud!

chattanooga
14 years ago

@michael: yes! let’s have a federal bailout of the rangers!  I would love to say that I’m in an ownership group for an MLB team.  Does that also mean I would get to vote on the free agent signings, or daily lineups?

len hotchkiss
14 years ago

hi im from merseyside uk and a liverpool fc supporter , sorry but dont know much about baseball but we have heard about hicks having money trouble with his team in the states , he co owns LFC with gillett we are worried over here that he cant pay his interest on the loan he took out to by LFC and we might fold , we hate him and gillett whats his name like in the states , worried fan

Richard in Dallas
14 years ago

@len – you probably know more about baseball than I know about non-American football, but we are on the same page here.  Hicks looks at sports teams only as a posession to make money with, and his results are proof that emotionless financial decisions in the realm of sport always lead to collapse.  He is the epitome of aloof, not even realizing why people have a distaste for him.  Even if he did, it is unlikely that he would do anything to correct his behavior as owner in order to make his situation better.  It will be a great day in Dallas sports when the Rangers (and, hopefully the Stars, also) are pried from his broke hands.

len hotchkiss
14 years ago

hi richard i thought that was the case the pair of them are hated at anfield (thats our ground) by all the fans ,they dont talk to each other and very rarely come to our games , hicks promised not to put us in debt , and did so as soon as he bought the club,they have   done nothing but suck the club dry , and he will not give the manager the money to get the best players so because of them we are falling behind the top clubs in europe , we are the greatest club in the world being ruined by hicks and gillett