The San Diego Padres have moved far beyond the old small-market label that once hung over the franchise. For years, they were treated like a club where stars eventually left to get paid elsewhere. That version of the Padres doesn’t fit anymore, and the completed sale of the team last week made that even clearer.
The deal pushed the franchise into a new financial tier. Dennis Lin of The Athletic described the Padres as a “$3.9 billion behemoth,” though there was skepticism about that number when the sale was first announced. Even so, the final price only reinforced how far the organization has come since Peter Seidler bought the club for $800 million in 2012.
Seidler, who died at 63 after an infection related to his compromised immune system, had already explained the way the organization viewed itself in 2023.
“Part of our thinking as an organization,” Seidler said about the franchise he bought for $800 million back in 2012, “is we just believe in the future of major league baseball.”
Current Padres CEO Erik Greupner said the plan was never built around turning that investment into something close to five times its original value.
“It never was,” said Greupner. “And it still isn’t.”
That line is hard to square with the final sale price, but within MLB, the message is unmistakable: the Padres have become a major financial player. Lin reported that one source believed $3 billion would have been enough to count as a huge win, and that was before multiple groups got involved early in the process.
The shift in perception started to take shape with Manny Machado. When A.J. Preller signed the third baseman to a ten-year, $300 million contract, it sent a loud message about what kind of franchise the Padres wanted to be.
“I think (fans were) used to players going away from San Diego … especially when it was time to get paid,” Preller said recently. “Manny was the guy that started to change that perception for everybody.”
From there, the payroll climbed and the team’s ability to stay in contention every year followed. That approach carried into this season’s deadline, and Greupner said the business side was built to support the on-field push.
“The strategy that Peter and A.J. and I discussed,” said Greupner, “was that we would (start by) increasing major-league payroll and showing the fans that there was a commitment to put a consistently winning and playoff-caliber team that could compete for a championship on the field.
“Then the challenge and the task on the business operation side was, ‘OK, now that we’ve done that, how much can we increase revenue in service of supporting that level of payroll?’”
Not every part of that growth story has gone perfectly, but the numbers still tell a clear tale. According to Lin, the Padres remain a top-five team in MLB attendance and are expected to draw three million fans, a group that also includes only the Dodgers, Philadelphia Phillies and New York Yankees. Sponsorships are up, and corporate partnerships are up too.
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