New Twins owners would find out that it’s not just about baseball

The Twins could introduce their third owner in team history as early as next year if the Pohlad family quickly finds a buyer for the club.

The team’s executive chair, Joe Pohlad, announced his family’s intention to sell the team Thursday after 40 years of ownership, and the Twins could become the sixth MLB team to change ownership within the last decade. The past four sales all fetched at least $1 billion.

A new owner would inherit some of the same issues that might have prompted the Pohlads to sell. The Twins expect their TV revenue to drop next year. Twins attendance has lagged in the first few years since Target Field opened in 2010. There is a greater payroll disparity among the teams — eight of the league’s lowest 12 payrolls reside in the American League and National League Central Divisions.

“It’s our objective,” Pohlad said in a statement, “to find an ownership group who all of us can be proud of and who will take care of the Minnesota Twins.”

New ownership often involves an immediate look at the club’s stadium situation. Recent buyers have shown they aren’t spending a billion dollars just to invest in baseball teams. Many have worked to turn their stadiums into the center of entertainment districts, following a model that proved successful in Atlanta and St. Louis.

The Minnesota Ballpark Authority, which owns Target Field, said Thursday it has a “strong lease and use agreements with the team, having just concluded the 15th season of the initial 30-year lease term.”

In Atlanta, the Braves opened Truist Park about 10 miles from downtown in 2017. They built their own mixed-use development, the Battery, surrounding the ballpark. It includes a hotel, apartments, restaurants, shops and bars. The Braves reported $59 million in revenue from the Battery last year, revenue that was mostly rental income.

Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman, who bought his team in 2019, proposed a $2 billion-plus downtown ballpark and surrounding district. Residents in Jackson County, Mo., overwhelmingly voted against a sales-tax measure that would have helped fund the new ballpark and renovations for the Kansas City Chiefs’ football stadium.

The Royals’ Kauffman Stadium opened in 1973 and underwent renovations from 2009 to 2012. The team’s lease in the current location expires after the 2030 season.

“We’re the second-smallest city with both an NFL franchise and Major League Baseball club,” Sherman said, “and we want to sustain ourselves as a major league city.”

Steven Cohen, who purchased the Mets in 2020 for more than $2.4 billion, proposed converting acres from Citi Field parking lots into a sprawling complex that would include a casino, food hall and concert venue.

Last year, the Wisconsin Legislature approved more than $500 million in public funds for renovations at American Family Field, which is expected to extend the Milwaukee Brewers’ lease through 2050. The Brewers are providing $150 million.

“We have to face the reality that while this ballpark, it’s beautiful, the infrastructure is 20-plus years old,” Brewers owner Mark Attanasio said during negotiations. “Even the scoreboard, which is great, the parts get obsolete so fast. ... We’re trying to address the future of the ballpark before it runs out of money, and not in a Band-Aid kind of way.”

Uncertainty around TV deals could chill teams’ spending throughout the league, particularly among the smaller-market clubs in the Midwest. The Twins announced Wednesday their TV broadcasts will be produced and distributed by MLB, becoming one of six teams under the league’s broadcasting wing. It does not come with traditional rights fees, so their revenue will be based on cable and satellite distribution fees, advertising and digital subscribers, though they will have additional production costs.

The Twins received $54.8 million from Diamond Sports Group, Bally Sports North’s parent company, in 2023. Their TV revenues are expected to be far smaller next year, and their brand partnerships department will play more of an active role in selling commercials during games and other ancillary programming.

Among the five major league teams that were purchased in the past decade — the Mariners, Marlins, Royals, Mets and Orioles — the Mets are the only team that significantly raised payroll. Cohen, a hedge fund manager, carried an MLB-record payroll of $374.7 million last year. The Mets just advanced to the National League Championship Series where they will face the Los Angeles Dodgers, another team with a payroll above $300 million.

The Twins carried a team-record player payroll of around $160 million in 2023, which ranked 16th among the 30 MLB teams. The last time the Twins, who have won one postseason series over the past 22 seasons, carried an Opening Day payroll that ranked in the top half of the major leagues was 2012.

Joe Pohlad rankled the fanbase after the Twins cut more than $30 million from their payroll last winter. The team did not make a significant addition at the trade deadline this July and finished four games out of a playoff spot after losing 27 of their final 39 games.

“We were at an all-time high last year, right? Fans were all in. Players were all in. We were headed down a great direction and I had to make a very difficult business decision but that’s just the reality of my world,” Pohlad said Sept. 29, before the Twins’ final game of the season. “I have a business to run, and it comes with tough decisions and that’s what I had to do.”

Seattle carried about a $145 million payroll this year, which was around where it was in 2019. The Mariners have made the postseason once in the past 23 seasons.

“My objective for us is to have a sustainable product on the field, meaning a team that is consistently competing every year,” Mariners owner John Stanton told the Seattle Times in June. “We’ve grown payroll each of the last three years. Maybe not as much as you would like us to … but we all deal with constraints, right?”

St. Louis, which maintained a payroll above $170 million over the past two years, is planning to reduce payroll for the 2025 season after failing to surpass 3 million fans this year for the first time since 2003. The Twins drew 1.951 million fans to Target Field this season, which ranked ahead of only seven teams and was below their preseason estimates. They haven’t drawn more than 2 million fans in a season since 2019, and they haven’t drawn above 2.26 million in a decade.

Milwaukee, which has a retractable roof, has drawn at least 2.3 million in every season since 2004, excluding 2020 and ’21 when there were COVID restrictions.

Kansas City, which finished this year with 1.658 million fans, hasn’t reached the 2 million milestone since 2017. The Royals bumped up their payroll this year and reached the playoffs for the first time since their 2015 World Series title.

“When I first bought the team [in 2005], I realized I didn’t have a clue how to operate a baseball team,” Attanasio, the Brewers owner, told the New York Times last year. “When I look at it as an investment matter, there’s just a few big line items, revenues and tickets and media, then there’s central revenues, and player payroll. … So: ‘Oh, this is easy.’

“Well, no.”