I can damn near guarantee you that both McLane and Comcast made representations to Crane and his group before they ever bought the Astros...and that they relied on those representations. That's how the acquisition of business interests goes. Neither the Rockets or the Astros have ever been part of owning a tv station before or negotiating carriage rights...Comcast does that all day, everyday.
Completely depends on whether they promised him a specific amount of money and he relied upon their promise. There is a whole lot of small details we do not know that will probably have a large part in the outcome.
Houston is a big enough market to not have to play these sort of games. Other carriers are posturing because they're still on the hook for FSN. Everybody still pays for that useless channel, and they'd have to add an additional fee for CSN on top of FSN... which they feel is too much burden to put on the subscriber.
Cranes group should know better than to rely on whatever representations that may have been made without having the right people (consultants/experts in the relevant field and maybe accountants and lawyers) making independent evaluations on their behalf. This is how acquisitions of business interests go. We are talking about big boys here.
Absolutely - and Crane appears to be fine with playing hardball with those networks. It's CSN that's trying to get out of this. Absolutely - I don't think anyone disagrees with this.
In summary astros and rockets took out $100MM loan through station and are not paying it back after hardlining on how much the station has to make from other providers. unbelievable
The problem is that many of us don't have the option of switching to Comcast. I can call Dish all day and threaten to switch carriers if they don't get CSN, but they know that nobody else in my area carries them either. So even though I really want the Astros and Rockets, I have no real leverage. All it would take is one domino to fall (say, DirectTV striking a deal) and all the others would fall in line. Because then their customers would have an actual alternative to get the channel. It seems like a bit of collusion on the part of the carriers, but I can't really blame them for that.
And that is public. comcast and directv are huge companies and make a bunch of money. that is public.
I don't think this is the case - it's not a normal bankruptcy filing, and outside of not paying Astros their rights fees, I don't think they've defaulted on their debt. So they are still making their normal payments on their $100mm loan as far as we know.
If there was a specific $ amount promise as to future carriage contract revenue from McLane or Comcast in the form of a contractual warranty when Crane bought the team, Crane would be suing These guys for breach of contract. I doubt there is given that no one could be certain about how carriage contract negotiations would go at that time (this is a separate issue from the contract between the Astros and CSN Houston on rights fees, which the Astros now complain CSN Houston failed to pay). Best anyone could do was an educated guess looking at comparable markets, etc., and Crane knew this. There are details that are obviously not public, but Crane relying on some sort of promise as to future carriage agreements makes no sense.
Ill give crane this credit, he is well ahead of where i thought he would be in rebuilding the minor league system.
True... but then again a lot of the top prospects are either #1 picks (you only get by tanking/losing), or were from the Ed Wade/Bobby Heck era (Springer, DDJr, Folty, Singleton, Santana). Also not hard to get quality depth by having the top pick in every round. But, they have done a good job of SIGNING the picks... which I guess is an accomplishment (even though there is now a strict penalty for going over slot that wasn't around in Drayton's time, and if they're not going to spend money at the major league level, they sure as hell better be signing all their draft picks). Guess I'm not really giving them all that much credit... but he did hire Luhnow! And he sure does know how to build up a farm system.
It has little to do with the current state of the team. When the Astros were on their World Series run in 2005, ratings were better, but not enough to justify the higher price CSN is looking for. DirecTV is the partner they should have gone with. They are the largest carrier and usually the first domino to fall. If DTV gets a channel, the other big providers pick it up. They have been a good partner for the Seattle Mariners. We could all be watching Root Sports Houston instead of discussing a bankruptcy case.
No question about it. And I haven't seen any written representations so I have no idea what's in the documents. But you can't make affirmative reps and then say, "Oh, that's not right? Really? Well you should have checked it out on your own I guess." My firm deals a ton in business acquisitions. Representations are huge. Crane's comments sound like he's at least posturing in negotiations with Comcast to make the argument that they made assurances to him that he relied on when purchasing the team that they didn't bring about. I have no idea for what was actually said, obviously. But I can promise you that both the Rockets and Astros were relying on Comcast with respect to assessing what they could expect and to negotiate the deals with the various carriers like Dish, Uverse and DirecTV.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeoza...stimated-2-billion-network-deal-with-directv/ Although, according to this article the Astros have inked a deal with Time Warner.
