Finding a buyer willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for a share in the team without having a major voice in running it is likely to be difficult. In 2011, the Mets tried to sell a $200 million stake, but their deal with David Einhorn, a hedge fund titan, fell apart in part because Einhorn wanted a greater hand in the team’s decision-making than is normally given to minority stakeholders, as well as a pathway to eventual majority control.

As a result, the Mets were forced to sell many smaller stakes, including several to their cable television partners. Wilpon and Katz also sold three shares to themselves.

There are no public profit-and-loss statements or other documents that definitively show the complete state of the club’s finances or how its ownership is structured. But reports linked to the bonds that were issued to finance the construction of Citi Field provide a partial snapshot of the team’s financial performance. Those documents show that revenue from the stadium’s 10,635 most expensive seats fell 58 percent, to just below $42 million in 2013 from $99.3 million in 2009. In the same period, concession sales decreased 29 percent and parking revenue dropped 20 percent. The team reportedly lost $70 million in 2011. Meanwhile, by last season, attendance at Citi Field had fallen 33 percent from the stadium’s opening season in 2009.

Katz’s apparent desire to sell suggests that the Mets’ losses have tested his patience. The team’s financial woes, which started around the time that Madoff’s fraud was exposed, in 2008, have had an effect on the team’s performance and on its owners and have limited the amounts spent in recent years on the club’s payroll.

That, in turn, has frustrated many Mets fans, who reason that if more money were spent on free agents, the club would be more competitive than it has been.

Wilpon and his son Jeff have maintained that the team’s finances have improved recently, but several people in baseball who have been briefed on that issue said that the situation remained troublesome. And the payroll essentially remains where it was in 2013, between $85 million and $90 million, leaving it in the bottom third in the major leagues despite the fact that the Mets are a big-market team.

With attendance figures that have declined markedly in recent seasons (there has been a slight uptick in 2014) and with significant debt payments still due on Citi Field, the Mets are likely to lose money again this season, the people said. That makes it unlikely that the payroll will jump substantially any time soon.