Atlanta Braves Looking for Some Crowd-Sourced Funds

Apr 14, 2014; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Atlanta Braves wearing a commemorative patch honoring Hank Aaron /

Details of Braves Financials Revealed by Liberty Media via AJC Story

Starting in the Spring, you can own part of the Atlanta Braves.

Well, kinda… but not really.

A story yesterday by the AJC (Tim Tucker) reveals a fascinating amount of detail about club finances, earnings, profit, and future direction for the team. In the short term, though, there’s information about the new tracking stock offering and how it fits with the team going forward.

The previously announced creation of a Tracking Stock for the Atlanta National League Baseball Club, Inc. is expected to be available later this year. Like traditional stock shares, they will be sold for the purpose of raising capital for the parent company. When the performance of the parent company improves – or is perceived to improve – the price of the shares will rise… and the reverse will be true as well. Unlike traditional stock shares, however, you won’t actually be purchasing an ownership stake in the club.

The primary purpose for Liberty Media creating this new stock appears to be in the financing of SunTrust Park. The newest figures on that are quoted in the Tucker article:

"Also, Liberty intends to raise $200 million with a rights offering of additional Braves shares. That money would be used largely to repay $165 million borrowed by the Braves from Liberty for the stadium."

This matches the number cited in November when the tracking stock was first announced.

If you want to purchase shares of the new tracking stock, it’s… a bit complicated. There are three flavors to choose from, all under the common name Liberty Braves Group:

Series A – ticker symbol BATRA
Series B – ticker symbol BATRB
Series C – ticker symbol BATRK

All of these will trade within the NASDAQ market. What’s the differences? Well, you’ll need to consult a stock broker to get the details. Companies will grant different privileges to stockholders depending on the share types they own.

For example, Google has Class A, B, and C shares. Class C shares (ticker symbol “GOOG”) have no voting rights, Class B are owned by ‘Google insiders’ and cannot be purchased by the general public. Class A shares (“GOOGL”) have voting rights, and sell for a higher price as a result.

Liberty Media has similar classes of stock already, and if you already happen to own Liberty Media stock… the “real” stuff… then you will automatically receive some shares of these tracking stocks as well. If you own Series A, you get series A of the tracking stock, and so forth.

So if you’re bullish on the team over the next several years… thinking maybe a World Series appearance within the next 3-10 years, perhaps?… then maybe an investment in the team might not be a bad move to add to your portfolio.

Losing Money?

As you would expect from an under-performing team, the Braves lost money in 2014 and 2015: $47 million and $16 million respectively (that latter figure from just the first 3 quarters of their fiscal year. This is related to revenue drops – tickets sales and more – but much of the loss is attributed to “depreciation and ammortization”, which frankly comes from accounting for certain things in certain ways.

The most interesting quote in Tucker’s writeup on this subject was this from a Vanderbilt Economics Professor:

"“Player salaries are treated as an expense twice: first as negative cash flow and second by treating the team roster as a depreciating asset”"

The roster is a depreciating asset? You can say that again.

More from Tomahawk Take

In any case, revenue seemed poised to be around $233-234 million for 2015, notably down from years past. It had been $260 million in 2013 and $250 million in 2014. Expenses had been cut significantly as well in advance of this, which was clearly anticipated.

Part of the ‘expenses’, of course, include the major league payroll, which peaked in 2014 at $114.7 million for the 40-man roster over the season. 2015 saw this down to roughly $107.5 million at years’ end. Those figures do not include draft or international bonus expenditures, which were in the neighborhood of $18 million.

At this point, the 25-man roster looks to be at roughly $83 million (TomahawkTake.com sources) to start the year. While that’s $24 million below last year’s expenditures, keep in mind that the Braves are transferring a significant portion of the payroll budget to international spending for 2016, for reasons we’ve discussed in depth several times. While on the surface, that suggests a possible $42 million outlay available for June and July signees, it does remain to be seen whether the club will choose to use all of that, or cut back as revenues might continue to contract prior to the opening of SunTrust Park and Battery Atlanta.

Next: Is Nothing Sacred?

In any case, it’s definitely worth a look for those interested in the numbers crunching… and in how teams conduct their business operations. It is definitely not just a matter of ‘writing a check’ when necessary.

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