The Seidler family, majority owners of the San Diego Padres, are exploring a potential sale of their controlling stake in the Major League Baseball franchise. The family has engaged merchant bank BDT & MSD Partners to advise on the process.
The dominant owners of the San Diego Padres of Major League Baseball (MLB), the Seidler family, are mulling over a sale of their stake.
This past season the Padres finished second in the National League West to the current World Series champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers. According to ESPN, they also enjoyed the second-best home-ballpark attendance in the MLB, coming in behind the Dodgers but ahead of the New York Yankees.
According to the statement (quoted by MLB) from club Chairman John Seidler, the family will be making its decision in a way that honors the legacy of the late Peter Seidler, who served as Chairman from 2020 to 2023, and puts “every resource into winning a World Series championship.”
The Seidlers were part of the O’Malley Group, the consortium that bought the club in 2012 for $800 million. The seller was John Moores, founder of BMC Software (Houston), who had purchased the Padres in late 1994 for about $80 million. (In selling the club, Moores managed to multiply his investment by ten over a span of eight years.)
Background
Leading the O’Malley Group was Peter O’Malley, former owner of the Dodgers. The other members were his sons, Kevin and Brian O’Malley, and two nephews, Peter and Tom Seidler. Professional golfer Phil Mickelson was for a while interested in buying a stake but dropped out. And Ron Fowler, who already owned a minority stake, took charge as Executive Chairman.
Eight years on, in 2020, Peter Seidler bought much of Fowler’s stake and became both the club’s largest shareholder and its Chairman. He died three years later, and here we are two years after that.
The Seidlers have engaged the merchant bank BDT & MSD Partners (Chicago, New York) for counsel. Otherwise neither they nor the Padres “intend to comment further until the process has concluded.”
State of the market
The most recent change in club ownership concerns the Tampa Bay Rays. In a deal approved by MLB this past September, principal owner Stuart Sternberg sold the club to a consortium led by real-estate developer Patrick Zalupski for about $1.7 billion. These days the Rays are looking for a new ballpark, Tropicana Field having lost its roof in 2024 to Hurricane Milton. This was key to the negotiations.
Before that, in 2024, came the sale of the Baltimore Orioles, for about $1 billion, by longtime owners the Angelos family to David Rubenstein, co-founder and Co-Chairman of The Carlyle Group (Washington, DC).
The highest price ever paid for an MLB club was $2.4 billion for the New York Mets – or for 95 percent of the pie. This occurred in late 2020. Sellers Saul Katz and Fred Wilpon, both specialized in real estate, retained 5 percent. The buyer was Steve Cohen, founder, Chairman and CEO of Point72 Asset Management (Stamford, Connecticut).
