Ok, NOW I'm afraid of the Texas Rangers

[clarknova]

When it was announced that Nolan Ryan & friends would be purchasing the Texas Rangers I wasn't afraid. I called back to memories of other ownership changes like Arte Moreno in Anaheim. A guy that showed up, flashed a lot of money around, bought up a bunch of front line free agents and proceeded to dominate the division. As we have seen, that excitement has been tempered some by the reality of owning a sports franchise and the demands that aging free agent contracts can put on a team's budget. I thought, "well, they'll be exciting for a couple years, then they'll have to pay a ton of money for under-performance and then we'll be ready to contend... Hopefully."

That was before I read this:

http://www.usatoday.com/communities/dailypitch/Index

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that means that the Rangers are going to have an additional $110 Million dollars in revenue a season. They could easily become the NY Yankees of the AL West in regards to spending and not even break a sweat. As blogger Conor Dowley (Proballnw.com) put it in a twitter post that led me to this article: "To say that news like that is bad for the Mariners is something of an understatement."

Yikes.

*note: I'm reading some serious skepticism about the numbers being reported by USA Today, due to it's incredible size, so... Grain of salt, but if the number is accurate... Sigh.

[JosephC]

How did they get such a good deal? I don't understand why... I was afraid of them before this, now this makes them even more feared than before. On that note, what is the Mariners TV deal?

[JosephC]

Okay, I dug some stuff up from the Seattle PI on the Mariners Broadcasting deal.

The deal is so good neither FSN nor the Mariners want to comment publicly on the amount. But sources in the sports and broadcast industries say the total value is more than $450 million (through 2020).

The current FSN deal, which was scheduled to expire in 2010, was worth about $300 million, which in 2000 was considered a breathtaking number. The new deal pretty much sucks the rest of the air out of the room.

All I can say is.... CRAP!!!!!!!

[Nateyb24]

We will just have to hit with our draft picks not like we will be competing for the west for a couple of years but i guess anything can happen. But aren't they in debt for awhile? I mean they have a huge debt to payoff i thought so there spending really isn't going to be 120Mil a year until it gets payed off.