The San Diego Padres are expected to confirm this week that private equity billionaire José E. Feliciano and his wife Kwanza Jones reached a deal to buy the club at a $3.9 billion valuation, Sportico reported on Friday.
The record price tag for an MLB team—topping Steve Cohen’s $2.42 billion New York Mets buy in 2020—surprised many fans, considering San Diego ranks outside the 15 largest U.S. metro areas, according to 2025 census estimates. The Los Angeles Angels, Washington Nationals and Minnesota Twins were all recently up for sale in bigger markets and didn’t find new control owners.
Nonetheless, the Padres are a robust business that is stronger than any of those three teams. In 2025, the team posted gross revenues of $530 million and EBITDA of $20 million, according to multiple people who reviewed the pitch deck distributed during the sales process. Net revenue after revenue sharing and cost of goods was an estimated $483 million, which ranked 10th among the league’s 30 teams.
Those numbers could have been even higher if San Diego’s local media situation hadn’t crumbled three years ago, when its regional sports network, Bally Sports San Diego, declared bankruptcy. The Padres’ rights have since been rolled up by MLB, which could spell a sizable payday if the league achieves its reimagined economic model in 2029 that provides more parity in the media revenue between big and small market clubs. The nine teams with higher revenue than San Diego last year, according to Sportico’s list, all had substantially more income from regional sports networks.
Petco Park is one of the best-drawing venues in MLB. San Diego had the league’s second-best attendance figure last year, with 3.4 million fans, and it has been in the top five each year since 2021. Fan enthusiasm has persisted even as ticket prices rose by more than 50% since 2022. The club now caps season tickets at more than 25,000 and has sold out of them four straight years, with a waiting list for an undisclosed number of fans.
The team has also turned Petco Park into a robust year-round destination for events, with the stadium set to host more than 150 non-MLB events this year; that includes stadium concert acts, such as Ed Sheeren, as well as concerts on a separate stage in Gallagher Square at Petco.
On the sponsorship side, the Padres were the first to take advantage when MLB began allowing clubs to sell sleeve patches on their jerseys. San Diego added Motorola to its uniforms in a 2022 deal estimated to be worth $10 million annually. The club also has a collection of blue-chip sponsors that includes Qualcomm, Toyota and U.S. Bank, and it will have a chance to seek a raise on stadium naming rights when its deal with Petco Park expires after the 2027 season.
And, depending on what happens with MLB’s next collective bargaining agreement, the Padres’ economics could become even stronger. If the league were to achieve any form of a salary cap, which the MLBPA has historically opposed, it would benefit the top-spending clubs in the sport, effectively saving them from themselves. The Padres have the seventh-highest 2026 payroll in MLB at $256 million, according to contract database Spotrac.
For nearly a decade, the Padres have been the sole team from the Big Four North American sports leagues in San Diego after the NFL’s Chargers headed up the coast to Los Angeles. The void left by professional football has seemingly improved the Padres’ standing in San Diego. (The city did add an NWSL club in 2022 and an MLS squad three years later.)
When the Padres officially launched their sale process in November, they attracted multiple billionaires.
Feliciano, who Forbes estimates is worth $3.9 billion, and Jones prevailed over Dan Friedkin ($11.3 billion), whose Pursuit Sports owns Everton and AS Roma; Detroit Pistons owner and Chargers minority shareholder Tom Gores ($10.1 billion); and Golden State Warriors and Valkyries co-owner Joe Lacob ($2.3 billion). In addition to Felicano’s offer, the Padres had two other bids of at least $3.5 billion.
The Padres were mired in a legal battle after lead owner Peter Seidler died in 2023. Seidler’s widow, Sheel Kamal Seidler, sued his brothers, Bob and Matt, in Texas probate court, alleging they violated their fiduciary duties as trustees of Peter’s estate, which possessed a controlling stake in the Padres. A court filing from February revealed that Sheel had dismissed most of her original claims.
The existing ownership group included at least 10 people or entities and bought the team in 2012 for $800 million. The Peter Seidler Trust held the largest stake in the Padres at roughly 24%, with Sheel and her three children as the beneficiaries.