Hedge fund manager Steve Cohen’s $2.6 billion deal to buy the Mets is on life support, and fans of the ball club are not happy.
On Tuesday it was revealed Cohen grew deeply unhappy with the current ownership group headed by the Wilpons after it changed terms of the deal late in negotiations, sources told The Post’s Thornton McEnery.
While the deal is not dead, it is in jeopardy.
The Mets said they could not comment on the status of the deal due to “a mutual non-disclosure agreement”.
Cohen, a Mets minority owner since 2012 whose net worth is an estimated $13 billion, was slated to purchase an 80 percent stake in the team, which had Mets fans jumping for joy just two months ago when the negotiations were first reported. The Wilpons have long been criticized for not spending as much as other big-market teams.
Under terms of the agreement, owner Fred Wilpon would retain the title of CEO and his son Jeff would remain COO for five years, though it had been reported Cohen could start spreading his wealth to the team as soon as next offseason.
It was initially reported that the Wilpons and fellow owner Saul Katz would maintain ownership of SNY, the team’s cable network.
At the MLB winter meetings in December, commissioner Rob Manfred indicated that the two sides were on the right track to a deal.This latest development adds to an already chaotic offseason, which saw the Mets fire Mickey Callaway, hire Carlos Beltran as their new manager only to dump Beltran months later for Luis Rojas, amid the Astros sign-stealing scandal that implicated Beltran.
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