Throughout this whole Madoff lawsuit mess, which has overshadowed the Mets spring training thus far, CEO Fred Wilpon and COO Jeff Wilpon have insisted that their financial troubles would not affect the team in the least. Even as they've sought to sell 20-25 percent of the club, they've framed it as a anticipatory, shrewd move, not a desperate one. But it turns out that the Wilpons and MLB were fully aware of the Mets financial crisis as early as last fall, when MLB gave the team a $25 million loan.
"We said in October that we expected to have a short-term liquidity issue. To address this, we did receive a loan from Major League Baseball in November. Beyond that, we will not discuss the matter any further," the team said in a statement. MLB commissioner Bud Selig, a close friend of the Wilpons who directly advocated for Sandy Alderson to become the team's new general manager, personally signed off on the loan. In addition, more information was revealed this week showing just how close the team was to Madoff: according to the Times, select people, including Larry King, were given the chance to invest with Madoff through Wilpon's company Sterling Equity.
One woman who did so explained that there were bizarre rules involved with it, and investors weren't allowed to contact Madoff directly: “We never questioned the fact we weren’t allowed to contact Madoff because of our confidence in Sterling. We invested because we trusted these two people absolutely; because they were big business and we assumed they knew what they were talking about,” said the woman.
With this new information, it is abundantly clear just how dire the situation may be for the team, and how aware of it the Wilpons are. And despite a desire to retain a controlling interest in the team, the Wilpons have now reportedly agreed to sell up to 49 percent of the team, a marked change from their past statements.
