Dodgers Co-Owner Defends Shohei Ohtani Contract

Todd Boehly, a associate within the Guggenheim Baseball Administration staff that owns the Dodgers, just lately sat down for a prolonged interview with Forbes.

The location stories that Boehly personally owns a 20 p.c stake within the staff, along with one other seven p.c via Eldridge Industries, an funding agency he co-founded and nonetheless oversees as CEO.

Since becoming a member of the possession group in 2012, the Dodgers have spent freely, instantly buying and selling for high-priced stars like Adrián González and Hanley Ramírez throughout their first summer time of possession. The end result? The Dodgers have by far baseball’s greatest profitable proportion during the last decade.

Since 2013, the Dodgers have made 11 consecutive playoff appearances and gained the World Sequence in 2020. Forbes now values the staff at $4.8 billion — 140 p.c greater than Walter and Boehly’s group paid for it.

Boehly was additionally a part of the decision-making group behind Shohei Ohtani’s large 10-year, $700 million contract, which he defended by saying “Ohtani cares so much about profitable and we care so much about profitable, so our ardour and his ardour lined up actually properly.”

The signing of Ohtani additionally catapulted the visibility of the Dodgers into one other dimension.

“On common, 9 million folks watched the 5 World Sequence video games final 12 months. We had roughly 70 million folks view Ohtani’s press convention. He bought extra jerseys than [Miami soccer star Lionel] Messi within the 48 hours after the announcement.”

— Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly, through Forbes

By deferring $680 million and agreeing to gather $2 million per 12 months, Ohtani’s contract is so team-friendly that it enabled the Dodgers to exit and signal extra gamers to place round him like Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Teoscar Hernández.

Boehly is aware of that the Dodgers can be referred to as each title below the solar for the subsequent 10 years, not less than, but it surely’s all a part of the enterprise.

Proper now, enterprise is superb.

Picture Credit score: Jonathan Hui-USA TODAY Sports activities

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