LA Dodgers owe $555 million, Most indebted Baseball team in history

Spotted: Forbes
Whom ever buys the Los Angeles Dodgers in a bankruptcy court-led sale from Frank McCourt will have a stack of IOUs to deal with.

The baseball team and its related entities now owe $555 million, according to people familiar with the finances.

McCourt securitized a large portion of the team’s ticket revenue in two trusts for which there is $390 million of debt attached. Annual principal and interest payments on the debt is around $32 million a year, meaning in 2010 the team, which gets the ticket revenue after the debt payments, would have received $70 million of the $102 million the Dodgers pulled in from ticket sales. For 2011, as attendance fell 17%, the team would have only received about $50 million.

The Dodgers also have borrowed $55 million from Major League Baseball’s credit facility and have used $80 million of debtor-in-possession financing from the league. On top of that, McCourt borrowed $30 million from Fox so he could meet payroll this past season. And the team is not off the hook from paying into MLB’s revenue-sharing system, which cost the Dodgers over $30 million in 2010.

All of these liabilities make the Dodgers, which forbes valued at $800 million in March, the most indebted team in baseball history.