Ben Mondor’s Once “Family-Friendly” PawSox Are Soon to Be a Private Equity Asset

Ben Mondor’s Once “Family-Friendly” PawSox Are Soon to Be a Private Equity Asset

Ben Mondor was born in Saint-Ignace-du-Lac, Canada, and came to the United States from the French-Canadian community, attended Mount Saint Charles, worked in the textile mills, and served in the Navy in WW II.

In the early 20th century, tens of thousands made the trip to leave the poverty of rural Canada and work in the mills in Northern Rhode Island.

Mondor built a business and ultimately purchased his own textile mills. It was the American Dream.

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In 1977, he bought the Pawtucket Red Sox and turned the once-bankrupt franchise into a model minor-league baseball team.

Now, the team is being gobbled up by a sports corporation that is controlled by a private equity group -- a group that invested early in Airbnb, Alibaba, and Twitter.

 

Local, Family-Friendly

Mondor met fans at the front gate of McCoy Stadium to say “hello” and patted nearly every child on the head, welcoming them to ballpark. 

In 2010, he died, leaving the team to his wife, and by February 2015, she sold the team to a group of millionaires and billionaires — many with Rhode Island ties.

The ownership group included Fenway Sports Management (a division of the Boston Red Sox' parent company, Fenway Sports Group, controlled by John Henry, owner of the Red Sox). The Rhode Island ties included former Rhode Island resident and Fleet Bank CEO Terry Murray, Habib Gorgi, MGM Board Chair and Providence Equity partner Paul Salem, and Former CVS CEO Tom Ryan.

By 2018, the team's attendance was falling, and a GoLocal report unveiled that the team was falsifying attendance numbers.

The Pawtucket Red Sox are inflating their attendance by as much as 300 percent. A GoLocal review of the reported attendance versus the actual number of paid in-stadium fans raises questions about the financial viability of the proposed financing scheme now being considered by the Rhode Island General Assembly.

The PawSox reported attendance to the International League was 2,328 for Tuesday night's game, and when pressed by GoLocal on the attendance number they were told by a PawSox spokesperson that the turnstile count was 1,444, but according to photos taken at McCoy, the attendance was approximately 400. PawSox officials refused to explain how the team's turnstile number could be 1,000 fans higher -- or more than 300 percent.

 

Worcester Bound

The new owners demanded a new stadium to be publicly financed in Rhode Island, and when they were rebuffed, they took their team to Worcester, where the city funded a new stadium — the $159 million Polar Park.

It is a stadium that realized tens of millions of cost overruns and has missed its financial promises.

After just two seasons, the ownership group led by Larry Lucchino announced it was selling — to Diamond Baseball Group — a sports company that now owns 21% of all the minor league baseball teams in America. In just the past year, Diamond Baseball Group has been buying minor league teams. 

Diamond Baseball Group’s leading investor is Silver Lake, a massive private equity firm with over $100 billion in assets.

In 2022, in a press release announcing Silver Lake's investment, “Since its launch, DBH has established a leadership position in Minor League Baseball, with its Clubs playing a pivotal role in local communities across the U.S. Given the massive live audience and reach of the minor league, we believe there is a large opportunity to invest further to support growth, drive technology-related innovation and offer improved experiences for all stakeholders,” said Stephen Evans, Managing Director of Silver Lake.

 

Private Equity Group

Other Silver Lake portfolio companies today include Dell Technologies, Good Rx, A Place for Mom, and Waymo (the autonomous driving vehicle company) and the sports holdings are immense including:

Australian Professional Leagues, City Football Group, Fanatics Trading Cards, Madison Square Garden Sports, New Zealand Rugby, and Learfield Sports. 

Since the Silver Lake investment into Diamond Baseball Group, the number of has jumped from ten in August of 2022 according to a Silver Lake announcement, to 26 today, and the WooSox would be number 27.

The Diamond Baseball Groups' teams in August of 2022 were the following 10 Clubs: Iowa Cubs (Triple-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs); Memphis Redbirds (Triple-A affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals); Scranton/Wilkes Barre RailRiders (Triple-A affiliate of the New York Yankees); Hudson Valley Renegades (High-A affiliate of the New York Yankees); San Jose Giants (Single-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants); Gwinnett Stripers (Triple-A affiliate of the Atlanta Braves, 2021 World Series Champions); Mississippi Braves (Double-A affiliate of the Atlanta Braves); Rome Braves (High-A affiliate of the Atlanta Braves); Augusta GreenJackets (Single-A affiliate of the Atlanta Braves); Oklahoma City Dodgers (Triple-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers).

De facto, today Diamond Back and Silver Lake are now the single most powerful force in minor league baseball -- other than Major League Baseball.