The owners of the Minnesota Twins have retained investment bank Allen & Company to explore a sale of the MLB franchise. The Pohlad family informed employees this morning.
“After months of thoughtful consideration, our family reached a decision this summer to explore selling the Twins,” the Twins said in a statement. “As we enter the next phase of this process, the time is right to make this decision public.”
If a deal is completed, it would end the four-decade tenure of the Pohlad family, which ranks as the fourth-longest in the sport behind ownership groups for the New York Yankees (1973), Chicago White Sox (1981) and Philadelphia Phillies (1981).
The Twins are worth $1.7 billion, according to Sportico’s most recent valuations. That ranks 19th in the 30-team league. The club’s 2023 revenue of $309 million after revenue sharing ranked 20th.
Carl Pohlad made his first fortune in banking and bought the Twins in 1984 for $44 million. He was baseball’s richest owner upon his death in 2009. His three children—Jim, Bob and Bill—inherited the club with Jim serving as control owner.
Team transactions have been rare in Major League Baseball in recent years, with only five control stake sales since Mark Walter’s group paid $2.15 billion for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2012. Last year, David Rubenstein led a consortium that paid $1.725 billion for the Baltimore Orioles. Steve Cohen paid an MLB-record $2.42 billion for the New York Mets in 2020, a year after John Sherman bought the Kansas City Royals for $1 billion. The other two most recent sales were Bruce Sherman’s $1.2 billion purchase of the Florida Marlins in 2017 and John Stanton’s $1.4 billion purchase of the Seattle Mariners in 2016.
In 2022, the Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Angels hired bankers to explore sales but neither team completed a transaction.
The Twins were born when the Washington Senators moved to Minnesota ahead of the 1961 season. The franchise won the World Series twice during the first eight years of Pohlad’s ownership but did not make the playoffs again until 2002. That year kicked off the first of 10 playoff appearances over 22 seasons. The Twins were on track for another postseason berth this year before a 12-26 finish left them out of the playoffs with an 82-80 record.
Last week, general manager Thad Levine announced he was leaving the organization after eight years in the role, but the club said Rocco Baldelli would return next year for a seventh season as manager. The Twins have been a model of stability in the dugout with only four managers during the past 38 seasons.
Minnesota’s payroll has ranked in the bottom half of the league during each of the past 12 years. It will be challenged to move up with the club needing to fill a hole in its local TV revenue. The Twins had a deal with Bally Sports North that was worth roughly $42 million and expired after the 2023 season. The Diamond Sports Group RSN carried the team’s games last year at a reduced rate but won’t broadcast games in 2025.
On Tuesday, MLB said it would assume in-market media production and distribution of the Twins, along with the Cleveland Guardians and Milwaukee Brewers. MLB will negotiate all cable and satellite distribution agreements, and the Twins should have a broader broadcast reach, but the arrangement will generate less revenue than its legacy RSN deal.
Hogan Lovells was retained to serve as legal advisor to the Pohlads during the sale process.
(This article has been updated with a statement from the Twins.)