Saturday, September 3, 2011

LA Marathon Creator Offers 1.2 Billion (Mostly Chinese) Dollars For LA Dodgers


This Is My Town
The View From Dodger Stadium
Around sunset some sights are even more exciting, in fact a few years ago the city and developers were trying to drive the team out of the location so it could be made into high priced homes. (Don't tell Burke and his partners.  We don't want to give them any ideas).

Picture above is used with a Creative Commons' license via Flickr's native placement and attribution coding. Rollover picture to see photographer's id, click on it to go to original location and view other sizes.

Bill Burke, husband of former LA County Supervisor Yvonne Braithwaithe Burke, and the man credited with creating the LA Marathon, has put forward an offer of $1.2 B backed by money from entities described as owned by the Chinese government.

McCourt has not actually put the team up for sale and who knows what he and his buddies at FOX will do about this offer which is good for 21 days.   (Though FOX no longer owns the team, it seems that they have so many connections with the McCourts and their vanity project/piggy bank team that it seems, to my eyes anyway, that FOX sold it to the Boston couple assuming and getting special deals built right in.  In fact, I think it is only MLB that has stopped Frank from signing TV broadcasting rights away to Murdoch's company for years to come.)

(And what is with Dodger games only being broadcast on the AM band for radio.  Who has an AM radio anymore?  You have to go sit in the car to listen to the game? My IPod has an FM station, but the current owner of the Dodgers can't be bothered to come into the 21st Century.)

Author of the LA Times article Frank McCourt gets offer: The Reds are coming? informs us that the deal would make the Dodgers the first MLB team owned by an African American, which would be good, but he is not so pleased with the money coming from groups with ties to the Chinese government.

I'm not that afraid of the Asian money, especially if Mr. Burke has the control. And if they will promise us to use an FM radio station to broadcast the games, I'll be estatic.

Besides, look at the alternative. The McCourts and Murdoch lunching off our local team possibly for years to come.