No, The Atlanta Braves Are Not For Sale

The chairman of Liberty Media wants you to know that the Atlanta Braves are not being sold any time soon

The Atlanta Braves' development of The Battery Atlanta has become the model of modern ballpark and mixed-use development / Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports

The Atlanta Braves are a publicly traded company and you can buy a share of ‘Atlanta Braves Holdings, Inc.’ right now. 

But no, the team as a whole is not up for sale. 

Liberty Media, the parent company that originally acquired the team from Time Warner back in 2007, spun off the Braves and their various assets and liabilities - Truist Park, The Battery Atlanta, associated debt - into Atlanta Braves Holdings Inc. back in June of last year. The organization trades under three different tracking stocks with ticker names of "BATRA", BATRB", and "BATRK" based on which type of common stock is being followed (A, B, or C-class common stock).    

Questions arose about a potential sale of the team a few days ago, when Liberty Media President and CEO Greg Maffei was speaking at MoffettNathanson’s Media, Internet & Communications Conference. In response to a question about whether the team could potentially be available for purchase, Maffei was non-committal with his response: “the one-year anniversary [of the Braves spinoff] comes up in a couple of months, and we’ll see,“ Maffei said. “We’re always trying to be good stewards of shareholder value, and we’ll see what gets presented or not.” 

Liberty Media chairman John Malone reached out to Sportico to clarify that Atlanta Braves Holdings, Inc. not only wasn’t for sale, but that there were mechanisms in place that would prevent a sale from occurring in the near future.  

“The Braves aren’t for sale, and the corporation that owns the Braves is not for sale,” said Malone in a phone interview. “When we spun the Braves off, I personally had to sign a representation to the lawyers that I had no plan or intent to sell my interest in the Braves.”

Malone went on to explain that there was no desire expressed to him from anyone within the organization to start a sale process, either. “They have not come to me with any kind of a proposal to do anything involving ownership of the Braves,” Malone said. “Terry (McGuirk, Braves Holdings president and CEO) and the guys have done a fabulous job with the Braves, we’re extremely proud of the team, the performance and particularly the real estate project.”

The real estate project Malone is referring to is The Battery Atlanta, adjacent to Truist Park and considered the gold standard for mixed-use developments built in conjunction with a new stadium. Braves Holdings has developed nearly two million square feet of mixed-use space that has retail shops and dining options, multiple hotels, and multifamily residential options all in the area around Truist Park.

In the organization’s most recent quarterly filing covering the first quarter of 2024, revenue from the mixed-use development segment grew 13% to $15.1M. 

Malone did not rule out some sort of ownership transaction happening someday, explaining that a hypothetical sale would only proceed “it had the full enthusiastic support of the management team that runs the Braves,” but reiterated that that would be far in the future. 

“The reality is, the team is not for sale,” he said. “And it’s prudent on my part to basically not even engage in those kinds of discussions until the spinoff transaction is very old and very cold.”

The full interview by reporter Anthony Crupi is available from Sportico.