Golden State Warriors co-owner Joe Lacob said his unsuccessful bid to buy the San Diego Padres assumed that the entire 2027 MLB season would likely be lost due to labor strife.
Lacob’s group was one of a handful of final bidders in the MLB auction, which was ultimately won by billionaire José E. Feliciano and his wife Kwanza Jones for a league-record $3.9 billion.
The sale came ahead of the potential MLB labor standoff. The current CBA expires at the end of this current season, and both sides are gearing up for what could be a prolonged fight over a salary cap, service time and other major issues.
Speaking at Sportico’s Invest West conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, Lacob was asked how his group modeled the potential risk of games being lost.
“We assumed likely not a season next year,” Lacob said. “Or at least that it was a possibility.”
Giving an owner’s perspective, he added that he believed baseball would benefit from having more cost certainty in the form of both a salary floor and a salary cap. He said that would likely result in the same amount of money paid on players, but would spread that money out across more teams.
“It’s good for the league to have proper and appropriate competition,” he said. “It can’t be just the Warriors doing well in the NBA, it has to be all the teams. Otherwise you don’t have a great league.”
Lacob said his interest in the Padres was both personal—“I happen to like baseball a lot”—but also financial. He said the economics of MLB look similar to that in the NBA, where teams in both sports rely heavily on tickets, media, sponsorships, high-end hospitality and merchandise.
“That’s what the businesses are,” he said. “It’s about local revenue generation. And I believe that we could be really good at doing that with a baseball team.”
On Feliciano’s winning bid, he added: “Some people have said it’s an overpay; it was a lot more than us, and I think we were second. But I think in the long run it will be a good investment, because I do believe in baseball.”
Lacob and his partner Peter Guber bought the Warriors in July 2010 for $450 million, at the time the highest price ever paid for an NBA franchise. The team is now worth $11.33 billion, according to Sportico’s latest valuations, more than any other team in the league.
Asked about the status of head coach Steve Kerr, who is in contract talks, Lacob declined to comment. He said the talks could have a resolution “today, tomorrow or in three weeks, I don’t know.”