Since January, many Americans have felt the transformation of various structures and functions under the second Donald Trump administration. However, the new omnibus tax bill currently making its way through Congress introduces a new wrinkle that will particularly upset Minnesota Twins fans; it could end up killing the sale of the team.
President Trump’s signature legislative plan, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” has passed the House and arrived at the Senate. The bill, which runs over 1,000 pages, generally comes down to broad tax cuts for the top earners in America by raising taxes on the poorest, alongside cutting 13.7 million Americans off health insurance. Radically sweeping in scope, the bill includes a ban on any regulation of artificial intelligence, neuters the judiciary’s power to limit abuses by the executive branch, and removes the requirement for citizens to register gun silencers. The bill projects to increase the federal deficit by $4.6 trillion over the next decade.
Most of the bill heavily favors the ultra-wealthy, but right where the Pohlad family needs a break most, it might bite them hardest. Specifically, the bill includes a dangerous poison pill for new sports owners and their tax bills.
Buried on page 966 of the bill is a “Limitation on Amortization of Certain Sports Franchises.” The clause replaces language in the current tax code, reducing “the adjusted basis” of various team assets from 100% to “50 percent.” As the New York Times reports, those assets “include player contracts, media rights and sponsorships … Under the House plan, team owners would be able to deduct from their taxes only half the value of those intangible assets over that period.” To put it plainly, many teams would be accepting a much higher bill than any cuts they might get. While the White House has claimed this is to punish owners for “overcharging ticketholders,” it is difficult to see why owners would respond to the situation by reducing prices.
Don’t cry for the owners, of course, but any current sports group will not be hit with the bill. Only new owners of teams purchased after the passage of the bill will feel the brunt. It’s a difference of, depending on the situation, tens or scores of millions in tax breaks lost. Not even billionaires can take such a hit without their eyes watering a bit.
That would likely have a chilling effect on the market for teams across every league, leaving most current owners—whether John Fisher of the Athletics or Jerry Reinsdorf of the White Sox—in place for another decade. New owners would probably want a discount on a sale, as they must spend extra years recovering their costs, something that the Pohlads have been unwilling to do. Unless the Pohlads are dead set on selling, the bill would likely keep them as owners for the foreseeable future; it would certainly prevent them from getting the kind of price they’ve sought thus far.
Because the sale of teams is a long and thorny process, the idea that the Pohlads could “rush” a transaction is far-fetched. When the Baltimore Orioles sale occurred last year, the timeline was slow:
The Pohlads could cut through as much red tape as possible to ensure a sale, but it seems unlikely. Trump has suggested the bill should be on his desk before the July 4 holiday, and selling before that would be an extraordinary feat, given where things appear to stand now. The best chance to find ownership will likely rely on MLB agreeing to ownership from abroad by those willing to overspend, which would most likely “sportswashing” ownership from the Middle East. For decades, foreign ownership has been bandied about, but the league has always treated it as anathema, and that’s unlikely to change now.
Because of the danger of the bill, NFL owners have already spent time lobbying various senators, where the bill is currently being debated. The politics of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act have been complicated even within the Republican Party, from those hoping to ensure Americans have access to Medicare to those who wish to see the bill’s enormous deficit cost reduced. The sports ownership clause could well be amended in the Senate before returning the bill to the House for reconciliation. The major leagues (MLB included) will surely lobby heavily for that outcome, but how effective that advocacy will be is hard to guess.
If it does pass, one might call it poetic justice. After all, Trump had a higher bid than Carl Pohlad to buy the team in the 1980s. But for fans, this is a rare moment where helping billionaires might actually be the best move. If the Act were to pass in its current form, the Pohlads and Twins fans could be stuck with each other for a long while.