Orioles ownership is finally changing hands in what amounts to franchise-altering news — both on and off the field.
Team chair and CEO John Angelos has agreed to sell the Orioles to private equity billionaire David Rubenstein in a deal valuing the club at $1.725 billion, Puck News first reported.
A timetable for when the deal will close is unclear, but MLB owners will be briefed on details of the sale next week when they meet in Orlando.
Rubenstein, a Baltimore native worth an estimated $4.6 billion by Bloomberg, will be the “control person,” with Mike Arougheti, the Ares Management Corp. co-founder, also part of the investment group buying into the ballclub.
The group stepping in to buy the beloved Maryland baseball team includes a slew of Maryland leaders, philanthropists and sports legends, including Orioles great Cal Ripken Jr., The Baltimore Banner reported.
The notoriously tight-fisted John Angelos has run the franchise — which is filled with young talent that will be in line for huge contracts in the coming years — since 2020 for his father due to the declining health of the now 94-year-old Peter Angelos.
The team is coming off a miraculous 2023 season in which they recorded a 101-win season and won the American League East.
The have a bevy of young stars, Rookie of the Year infielder Gunnar Henderson and All-Star catcher Adley Rutschman, along with one of the best farm systems in all of baseball, including baseball’s top prospect in Jackson Holliday, but the team has done little to improve its roster after the Cinderella season.
Their only free-agent signing amounted to a one-year deal for pitcher Craig Kimbrel.
The Orioles’ payroll will jump to north of $80 million in 2024 after several players received raises through arbitration, but will remain among the league’s lowest.
Rubenstein’s deep pockets could bring about change to the way the organization spends and pursues free agents once he joins the Orioles’ ownership ranks, but questions still remain about how the franchise will operate going forward.
The ownership group of Rubenstein and Arougheti will initially own a 40 percent stake in the team and buy Angelos’ remaining interest in the Orioles following the death of Peter Angelos, the family patriarch who initially purchased the team back in 1993.
John Angelos had told Maryland Gov. Wes Moore the team wasn’t for sale following a Bloomberg report that Rubenstein was in talks to purchase the franchise as the Orioles were trying to finalize a new lease agreement with the state, according to a Wall Street Journal article published late last month.
The Orioles eventually agreed to a 30-year lease in the middle of December.
Now, the franchise appears to be on the cusp of getting a new deep-pocketed ownership group that includes one of the team’s most celebrated players.
And Rubenstein is a proud Baltimore native who hailed from a Jewish neighborhood in Northwest Baltimore, attended Baltimore City College and is heavily involved in the local baseball scene.
His interest in buying the Orioles reaches back to 2022 when Rubenstein and Wizards, Mystics and Capitals owner Ted Leonsis had said they would consider bidding on the franchise if it were for sale.
The two had also considered a bid to buy the Nationals that same year.
The billionaire’s love of baseball was evident in an episode of “Iconic America” in which he traveled to Fenway Park and talked about playing the sport growing up in Baltimore.
“Ever since I was a kid, I loved baseball,” he said in the episode. “I played Little League growing up in Baltimore, but I’ve always wanted to come to Boston to see Fenway Park.”
Rubenstein accumulated his wealth as one of the founders of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group.
