Missed this on Christmas Eve as I was decking the halls and stuff, but Richard Sandomir has yet another article underscoring just how bad off the Wilpons and the Mets are, financially speaking:
Their $430 million loan on the team is due in 2014. Their $25 million loan from M.L.B. is past due and repayment has been extended. They recently borrowed $40 million from Bank of America. Their valuable network, SNY, is also heavily leveraged, to the tune of $450 million, a loan that must be repaid in 2015. And the Mets’ Citi Field bond payments leapt from $19 million last year to $43.7 million. That is a lot of borrowing for a team that lost $70 million last season and had faltering attendance.
Not the boldest prediction ever: the Mets will be on the market — the whole team, not just parts — before 2012 is over. Just a feeling.