Originally Posted by
Oviedo
Originally Posted by
RuthlessBurgher
Each of the 5 brothers owns 16%, and the McGinley family owns the remaining 20%. I think the best case scenario would be if Dan could manage to buy 2 of his brothers out entirely, and maybe buying, say, 5% from the McGinleys, giving them 53% so they could not possibly lose controlling interest of the team no matter what. Then the other two brothers could sell their shares to billionaire Druckmiller, giving him a 32% minority stake. That would ease some of the financial burden, since Dan would not have to take on such a large debt if he were to try to buy out all of his brothers.
I was pretty much thinking the same thing. If Dan Rooney's goal is not total ownership, all he needs to do is to add to his 16% enough to get it to 51%. However, that still would not be an insignificant amount of money for Dan to come up with. I think that we all forget that the Rooneys are not like the Snyders and Jones in that their net worth is primarily the Steelers not an external source of revenue. For Dan to buy out anyone he would have to take loans out with his portion of the Steelers as collateral. In the long term financial picture of his family it may just be better to let Druckenmiller buy the team and he keeps his 16%. His 16% was all he was going to pass to his direct descendants anyway.
RB, I'd agree that Dan and Art II buying out two of the brothers would be a best case solution. But Oviedo makes a great point in that Dan and Art II derive most of their livelihood out of the Steelers exclusively.
There was another NFL owner of recent vintage who had the same type of financial interest and portfolio. His name was Art Modell. Now, I'm not suggesting that the Rooneys would ever consider moving the team. That isn't even a factor here. But the kind of money that it would take to assume a controlling interest in the team is precisely the scenario that drove Modell out of the NFL.
Granted, Modell was a greedy $OB and thought (incorrectly) that Cleveland was trying to screw him over, so he took all his marbles and bought all the marbles from the other minority owners of the Clowns and spirited off to Baltimore. It cost Modell a hefty sum of $$$ to buy out the entire minority interest of the Clowns to move the team and it ended up costing him the team and most of his fortune.
Now, assuming that the McGinley family is completely out of the loop on this deal, their 20% doesn't factor into the equation at all.
That leaves the 80% interest of the Rooney family at stake. Each of the brothers own 16% or, in real $, roughly a $150M stake/brother. If Dan and Art II buy out two of the three brothers straight up, it will cost them nearly $300M to do so.
To buy enough of an interest to have a majority 51% share of the team, it will cost Dan and Art II $325M to accomplish that.
In either case, neither one of those figures is anywhere near the ballpark of chump change and, I believe, each figure exceeds the total amount that it took Modell to buy out the minority shares of the Clowns. Knowing that the financial holdings of Dan and Art II weigh heavily in their involvement in the Steelers like Modell's did in the Clowns, I doubt that Dan and Art II could pull off either of the above scenarios without bankrupting the team or themselves personally.
The
only scenario that would guarantee a controlling interest for Dan and Art II would be a stake where they would buy a 41% interest in the team. That would cost them a combined $233M and while it's still not chump change, at least it's somewhat realistic and would keep financial controlling interest in the Rooney family for the foreseeable future.
No matter what, Druckenmiller is going to be a factor in this deal. He almost has to be. Considering that Art II is more than likely the heir apparent to the Rooney family's future with the Steelers, he is probably going to have the added burden of assuming the complete financial interest of the team upon his father's death. In realistic terms, Art II will need to front $116.5M for his half of the 41% majority and find the money to buy out his father's $116.5M share.
I see no coincidence in Druckenmiller's appearance here. The only question at present is what his final stake will be and how much of a factor will he be in the ownership of the team. I figure that he will have at least a 39% stake in the team when all is said and done and perhaps more if Dan and Art II are insufficiently funded to buy their claim to majorty ownership.
When all is said and done, however, it appears that the Rooney family's controlling interest in the Steelers is hanging in the balance and that Dan and Art II's relationship with Druckenmiller is the factor we all need to be looking at in the near term.
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