An angel for the Angels?

Black businessman Watkins eyes AL champions

So the Anaheim Angels step onto the World Series stage with a large For Sale sign slapped across their backs. Walt Disney execs swear the American League champs are a financial dud -- losing $100 million from 1995-2001, according to figures released by the commissioner’s office.

Think about this. The very day the Angels clinched a playoff berth for the first time in 16 years, Disney hooked up with Lehman Brothers, the investment brokers, to officially market the baseball team and the Mighty Ducks hockey franchise.

With stock prices in the tank, Disney is poised to sell off what the bean counters call non-strategic assets while another media/entertainment conglomerate, AOL-Time Warner, also hints at throwing its sports franchises (the Atlanta Braves, Hawks and Thrashers) overboard in a bid to impress Wall Street.

You may recall that when baseball was scheming to contract a handful of clubs last year the Angels were on the hit list. Perhaps not as high as the Minnesota Twins or Montreal Expos, but in the same neighborhood as the Florida Marlins and Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Funny thing is, both Anaheim and Minnesota survived to see the postseason, the Angels taking out the Twins out in the AL Championship Series. Even funnier? Alabama businessman Donald Watkins has popped up at both franchises to kick the tires. Once interested in buying the Twins, he's now in serious pursuit of the Angels.

“I am working on the Anaheim Angels every day,’’ Watkins said earlier this week as he prepared to venture west for World Series between the Angels and the San Francisco Giants. “I can tell you, they are definitely selling [the team].’’

Watkins says he’s among four potential buyers sniffing around the club, the competition being Mexican billionaire Carlos Peralta, an investment group led by former baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and the Nederlander family, which is heavily involved in the entertainment business and has a small piece of the New York Yankees.

If he wins out, Watkins would be the first African-American to own a majority stake of a Major League Baseball team. But his chances grow slimmer as Disney drags out the process. Before baseball reached a labor settlement in August, Watkins was the only prospective buyer, offering a low-ball offer of $150 million that Disney didn’t even bother responding to.

The entertainment giant bought the Angels for $140 million in 1996 in hopes of using the team as anchor programming for a regional ESPN cable network, only to be upstaged by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox television network, which bought the Los Angeles Dodgers. Add the $98 million that Disney sunk into renovating Edison Field, and you can see why Watkins' initial offer drew a yawn.

Of course, a first-ever World Series appearance figures to boost the asking price, along with spiking ticket sales and generating additional TV revenue. Still, a best guess puts the club's eventual sale price in the neighborhood of $200 million to $210 million.

Yet if MLB is so bad off and the Angels are a money loser, why Watkins' interest in joining Bud Selig and his fraternity brothers? Ever the optimist, he feels certain he can milk the revenue streams better than Disney and perhaps even generate more from broadcast rights agreements.

“If you look at the settlement of the labor issue [with the players’ union], you’re going to have uninterrupted revenue streams for at least four years," said Watkins, a founder and chairman of Birmingham-based Alamerica Bank and also the holder of considerable energy investments.

“If you have a hot commodity in a major metro area, like the Angels are, that is another plus. At least you are in a state that has significantly more disposable income per capita than Minnesota or an area like Tampa Bay. I don’t think the overall economy will have a negative impact upon baseball economics as much as it’ll depend on the specific market you are in.

“In Anaheim, you do have to be more aggressive on marketing. But you’re sitting in Orange County with a 47 percent Latino community. So you have an untapped market that has a natural predisposition to the sport and the product. It’s a good market -- the second major market in the United States."

Watkins made a follow-up offer for the Angels in September after the players and owners reached a labor accord, and he’s currently in the process of revising his proposal. It’s his thinking that Disney could be ready to close a deal by the end of the year.

The most nagging question with Watkins is whether he has the cash to purchase a team. He credits Selig and influential Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf with steering him through the process, but Twins officials earlier suggested he didn’t prove he had the net worth to buy the club.

No one from the Twins ever bothered to ask, Watkins counters.

“I had a courteous meeting with the people in Minnesota, but it was more form over substance,’’ laughed Watkins, who now admits he’d consider taking on limited partners. “The Disney people have been very engaging and the meetings have been substantive. There’s no question the Disney people are trying to sell the Angels. I don’t know what the deal is in Minnesota.’’

Watkins privately puts his net worth at $1.5 billion, while refusing to detail his holdings in the banking and energy industries. Because it couldn’t dig into his privately held assets, Forbes Magazine declines to list him among its richest 400 Americans.

What matters is as franchises quietly come up for sale, baseball is making sure that Watkins gets a call . . . though his current target is center stage at the World Series.

Mike Fish is a senior writer for CNNSI.com.

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