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Wilpon ups Mets stake at lower than expected $1.5B valuation

It looks like the New York Mets are worth even less than some of their most long-suffering fans might think — and are in the financial minors compared with their Subway Series rivals.

Owner Fred Wilpon is poised to enlarge his majority Mets stake in a deal that values the struggling team at roughly $1.5 billion, The Post has learned.

That’s considerably less than the $2.1 billion valuation that Forbes pegged on the Amazin’ s last spring — and less than half the $4 billion price tag that the Yankees would presumably fetch, according to the magazine.

Under the deal, Wilpon’s investment firm Sterling Equities has agreed to pay roughly $180 million to buy back about a 12 percent stake in the Amazin’ s from cable giants Comcast and Charter Communications, owner of the Spectrum network, sources close to the situation said.





Comcast and Charter — which acquired the stake in 2012 from the Wilpons, when the family was scrambling to raise cash after losing a fortune on the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme — have been trying to unload the stake since last summer, sources said.

A major stumbling block, according to some sources, has been the likelihood that Fred Wilpon will pass control of the team to his son Jeff, who as the team’s operating chief has been blasted by critics as meddlesome and tightfisted.

The cable companies finally found a suitor willing to buy the stake at a valuation that was considerably lower than Wilpon thought the team was worth, so Wilpon’s Sterling exercised its right to match the offer, according to a source. The identity of the suitor couldn’t immediately be learned.





“They got a price in the open market, and Sterling bought it back rather than letting it go to a third party,” the source said.

Sterling likely paid for the stake in cash as there are rules limiting the amount of debt an owner can put on a team, a source said.

Still, the deal could raise questions about the Wilpons’ willingness to spend on the Mets this year — including a contract for Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Jacob deGrom.

Some kind of discount on the deal had been expected, as Comcast and Charter, working with investment bank Inner Circle Sports, are auctioning minority stakes with no path to ownership. Still, the deal’s steep markdown took some by surprise.

The Wilpons last summer were said to be unlikely to buy back the stakes.





In 2012, Sterling sold 48 percent of the team in 12 lots for $20 million each, giving the Mets a roughly $500 million valuation. Wilpon was raising money to pay back a Bank of America bridge loan, as well as an overdue loan to Major League Baseball. Without those funds, he likely would have lost control of the team, sources said.

Despite digging itself out of the scrape, Wilpon’s Sterling over the last few years has quietly increased its ownership stake in the team from 52 percent to about 68 percent with the Comcast-Charter deal, sources said.

The Mets declined to comment.





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