The Mariners’ ownership group has a numbers problem, and the recent blockbuster sales of the Padres and Angels only make it harder to ignore.
For fans in Seattle, the frustration has long been about more than wins and losses. The bigger complaint is that John Stanton and the rest of the ownership group are viewed as people who care too much about protecting the bottom line and not enough about pushing the club to the level it needs to reach for a first World Series title.
Fair or not, that perception is baked in. And now the market around them is sprinting in a direction that could force a hard conversation.
The Padres were sold for $3.9 billion after being valued at $3.1 billion, a 25.8% premium. The Angels went even higher, with Stan Kroenke buying them for $4 billion after a $2.7 billion valuation, a 48.1% premium. Kroenke also instantly became the richest owner in baseball, which is the kind of detail that changes the landscape all by itself.
This is not just a baseball story, either. Sports franchise prices are exploding across the board.
The Lakers were sold last month for $12.5 billion, only a little more than a year after a previous sale at $10 billion. And closer to home, the Seahawks were bought by the Khosla family in July for $9.6 billion, after Forbes valued them at $6.7 billion last November.
That kind of growth makes the whole market look overheated, almost like it’s moving inside a bubble. Still, there’s a reason the prices keep climbing. Last month, The Athletic’s Tania Ganguli wrote: "Sports is one of the last big draws to live television, and as a result leagues - and therefore the teams - are being paid far more for the rights to air their games."
Not everyone thinks the market is about to cool off. Irwin Kishner, a partner at Herrick and co-chair of its sports law division, said he is "absolutely convinced we have not reached anything close to a ceiling."
For the Mariners, the financial math is staring ownership right in the face. CNBC valued the club at $2.35 billion in March, which put Seattle 16th among the 30 MLB franchises.
With the Padres and Angels deals setting the market, a reasonable asking price for the Mariners could be more than $3 billion. That would be a huge gain over the $1.26 billion Stanton and company paid for a 90 percent stake in 2016.
A sale in that range would mean more than doubling the original investment. Even so, the return looks different depending on the lens. A roughly $3 billion sale would not be especially impressive compared with the stock market’s roughly 15 percent annualized growth over the last 10 years.
So the real question is simple: what does John Stanton actually want here?
Owning a team is always a balancing act between risk and caution, between holding and cashing out. That’s especially true when the asset keeps appreciating the way MLB franchises have.
For Stanton, Chris Larson and the rest of the group, the issue is not just what the team is worth now. It’s what they want the endgame to be.
The Mariners’ ownership group has never been especially beloved by the fanbase, and that hasn’t changed. There was some optimism after the club went all-in at last year’s trade deadline, but that goodwill has faded with everything that has happened in 2026.
Stanton, as a Seattle native, surely wants to see the Mariners win a World Series on his watch. But that does not erase the broader belief, fair or not, that the ownership group is missing something when it comes to fully committing to that goal. They are the kind of owners you can imagine being comfortable with a pending lockout producing some form of salary cap, letting them stay competitive without feeling as much pressure to spend.
Even if a sale north of $3 billion is not a perfect return in the strictest financial sense, it is still an enormous payday. And if these soaring franchise values are the sign of a bubble, the smart move is not always to wait for it to pop. For Stanton, Larson and company, this may be the best window they’ll ever get - and given how they are perceived in Seattle, it is a question worth taking seriously.
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