The Twins solved their short-term $400 million financial dilemma by agreeing to sell portions of the franchise to as-yet-unidentified minority investors, a transaction that is still in progress. It took more than 10 months of uncertainty before that solution became clear.
And that may be the easy part.
The Twins’ long-term financial outlook might take far longer to guarantee, at least as a family-owned asset of the Pohlads, and depends upon navigating a far more turbulent path — baseball getting a new Collective Bargaining Agreement after next season, a process that could shut down business for a lengthy period of time.
Joe Pohlad, executive chair of Minnesota’s MLB franchise and grandson of Carl Pohlad, who bought the team 41 years ago, said in an interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune earlier this month that the decision to take on partners but keep majority control of the team “addresses the debt that we have incurred.” The debt grew substantially when COVID-19 cost MLB nearly two-thirds of the 2020 season, and forced games to be played in empty stadiums.
But Pohlad added an observation that hints at the challenge that he believes still looms for franchises outside the country’s major media markets.
“That debt built up as we tried to invest in the fan experience [at Target Field] and in our team,” Pohlad said. “What we’ve found is that’s really difficult to do in this current economic model.”
Pohlad did not elaborate, but he didn’t have to — his complaint is hardly uncommon in a sport that has an ever-widening disparity between its franchises in revenues and, hardly unrelated, in player payroll. According to an analysis by CNBC published in April, the Twins’ gross revenue, estimated by the network at $356 million last year, is roughly half that of the Yankees and Dodgers, each of whom took in more than $700 million.
It’s no wonder, then, that the Twins’ 2025 payroll, pegged at $128 million this season by baseball-tracker Cot’s Baseball Contracts, is far less than half that of those MLB colossuses, with the Yankees spending around $297 million and the Dodgers spending a record $338 million. Not to mention the $336 million payroll carried this year by the Mets’ Steve Cohen, the wealthiest owner in baseball.