{"id":337,"date":"2008-12-07T21:38:41","date_gmt":"2008-12-08T02:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/?p=337"},"modified":"2008-12-07T21:59:43","modified_gmt":"2008-12-08T02:59:43","slug":"liquidation-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/337\/liquidation-sale","title":{"rendered":"Liquidation Sale"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NeverTwo items of local interest from the weekend: on Friday, Cubs chairman Crane Kenney announced the team’s hope for its impending sale to complete before spring training<\/a> and then this evening, word came out the Tribune company is seeking bankruptcy protection<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Besides the obvious and laughable field day the Sun-Times will have with this<\/del> wasted no time kicking off<\/a>, you have to wonder if and how this played into the construction of both the terms and the names contained the super-secret list of prospective bids for the Cubs. Everyone knew the Tribune was in dire straits (Sam Zell may have put<\/a> his company’s condition best), but how much could the owner’s financial state really affect the sale of the asset?<\/p>\n

Even considering the company’s odd financial strategies under Zell (anyone remember when they were going to hold on to a stake of the team to avoid the tax bills<\/a>?) it seems hard to look at the Cubs as even a remotely typical sell-off. Some might say an overly motivated seller has the weakest position of anyone in business; if we’re to look at the Tribune Co. as a guy in a pawn shop, that has to be quite the resale operation considering they’re in a position to raise tickets prices<\/a> even as most economists say the sky is falling.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the Cubs have a very cheap, very lengthy broadcasting deal<\/a> inked with WGN before Zell came in to break up the company, meaning the Tribune’s profit margin on Cubs-related marketing and content could actually increase<\/em> once they’ve sold the club while the new owners lose a sweet moneymaker right out of the gate, although with MLB so closely guarding their ledger sheets we may never know by how much – or if at all, depending on what happens next at 435 N. Michigan<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A pair of related news items make the Chicago Tribune even more meta than we ever imagined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[18,24,26,36,91],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}