There aren’t many major league ownership reigns which ended more ignominiously than Frank McCourt’s reign as Dodgers owner. He was granted access to one of business’ most exclusive clubs -- one which being a convicted criminal or even a Nazi sympathizer cannot get you kicked out of -- and somehow got kicked out. The clear lesson from his saga was that saddling your team with debt, using it as your own private piggy bank and exercising bad judgment at every possible turn will not get you drummed out of baseball but, by gum, having it all go public in a divorce case sure as heck will.
McCourt landed pretty safely, though. By sheer luck, his being kicked out of ownership coincided with the vast appreciation of major league franchise values and the expiration of the Dodgers cable television deal. He may have left in disgrace, but he also left with a couple of billion dollars thanks to the genius of capitalism. At the time it was assumed he’d ride off into the sunset, continuing to make a mint off of parking at Dodgers games (he retained a big piece of that pie) and not get his hands messy with sports ownership again.
Such assumptions were inoperative:
Frank McCourt has bought Olympique de Marseille for around €40m from Margarita Louis Dreyfus, according to RMC https://t.co/QYIAJURy8s
— Get French Football News (@GFFN) August 29, 2016
The soccer club has suffered from poor financial decisions in recent years. So I guess it was a match made in heaven.
