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Because they just can’t help themselves, the White Sox once again made off the field news this week when an article in Crain’s Chicago Business broke that Jerry Reinsdorf is considering selling the team and\/or moving them to a new location when the lease at Guaranteed Rate Field expires in 2029.\u00a0 Alternative locations mentioned in the article were elsewhere in Chicago, the suburbs, or Nashville, Tennessee.<\/p>\n
Now, first things first.\u00a0 Reinsforf, who turns 88 next February, is unlikely to sell the team in his lifetime.\u00a0 Reinsdorf made his bones as a tax attorney who was known for having detailed knowledge of the tax code and the loopholes within.\u00a0 It has long been speculated that the team will not sell until after his death to shield his heirs from the capital gains tax that would be owed once the team is sold.\u00a0 Reinsforf and company purchased the White Sox for $19 million back in 1981.\u00a0 Conservatively, the team is worth upwards of $1 billion dollars today and would likely sell for over $2 billion.\u00a0 If Reinsdorf sells, he owes taxes on the difference between the selling price and his initial $19 million investment.\u00a0 If his heirs sell, they will owe tax on the difference between the value when they inherited the team and the selling price.\u00a0 That’s quite a difference.<\/p>\n
As for moving, I would be shocked if the team ended up moving out of state.\u00a0 Firstly, there are still six years left on the team’s lease for the current ballpark.\u00a0 A ballpark that, frankly, is in a better condition today than it was the day it opened.\u00a0 The most likely outcome is that Reindorf and company is just rattling the cage in the hopes of getting concessions on a new lease agreement.\u00a0 In the unlikely event the team were to move, the most obvious location would be the current Soldier Field, which the Bears are looking to abandon as they head to Arlington Heights.\u00a0 Tearing down the existing structure would be costly and building something new would be costly (and what about the Fire and summertime concerts?), but could use buyout money from the Bears to cover some of that cost.\u00a0 Suburban locations could also be on the table.\u00a0 The teams fanbase is concentrated in the south and southwest suburbs, though last time they threatened to move they were looking to the northwest.\u00a0 There is too much money to be made in Nashville as an expansion franchise for me to seriously consider that MLB would allow an existing team to relocate there.<\/p>\n
All that said, this report will likely turn out to be much ado about nothing.\u00a0 Which is exactly what you want when you’re fighting for a top draft pick in a season you were expecting to be competing for the World Series.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Because they just can’t help themselves, the White Sox once again made off the field news this week when an article in Crain’s Chicago Business broke that Jerry Reinsdorf is considering selling the team and\/or moving them to a new location when the lease at Guaranteed Rate Field expires in 2029.\u00a0 Alternative locations mentioned in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[20,7378,10754,6917,1670,2244,2432,49],"class_list":["post-20588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball","tag-bears","tag-chicago-fire","tag-crains-chicago-business","tag-guaranteed-rate-field","tag-jerry-reinsdorf","tag-mlb","tag-soldier-field","tag-white-sox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20589,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20588\/revisions\/20589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}