There’s a potentially major shift happening in the New York baseball pecking order, or at least how the Mets are perceived after more than six decades as an often-lovable underdog.
Since the Mets’ 1962 arrival as an expansion team, the team has generally held a lesser stature compared to the crosstown Yankees, owners of the most championships in major North American men’s pro sports. Head-to-head, the dichotomy is even more stark, with the Yankees’ 27 titles far outdistancing the Mets’ two, including a victory in their only head-to-head World Series matchup in 2000.
The Mets’ 15-year, $765 million deal for Juan Soto, though, resets the dynamic in many respects. The pact not only set a new record for the largest player deal in sports history but also beat out the Yankees’ top offer of $760 million over 16 years.
No longer can the Mets be seen as a scrappy upstart. They are backed by MLB’s richest team owner in Steve Cohen, who in his four-year ownership tenure already had made the Mets a top-spending club across the league. To that end, industry sources said it was Cohen who was a key driver in completing the Soto deal, along with president of baseball operations David Stearns.
“The goal actually wasn’t to beat the Yankees, even if that happens,” said a source close to the Soto negotiations. “It was to get past the Dodgers.”
Even before the historic pact with Soto, there was already change in the air surrounding the Mets as they advanced this year to the National League Championship Series. During the regular season and subsequent playoff run, the team largely shed a more downcast and fatalistic vibe that had infected the franchise—particularly during the often-embattled ownership reign of Fred Wilpon—and embraced a distinct sense of joy, in part through numerous viral intersections with pop culture.
With the Soto deal, the Mets are poised to lose money for the foreseeable future, sources said. But the signing is expected to elevate the entire franchise, both on and off the field, and advance the Mets’ pursuit of their first title since 1986.
“This deal certainly isn’t going to change his lifestyle, or his philanthropy,” a source said of Cohen, referring to the more than $1.2 billion donated through the owner’s personal foundation.
Money for Wilpon
The Mets’ former owner is also poised to reap sizable rewards from the Soto agreement. Sterling Equities, the company controlled by Wilpon and brother-in-law Saul Katz, has retained a majority equity stake in SportsNet New York, the club’s regional sports network, and it was not included in Cohen’s 2020 deal to buy the club for more than $2.4 billion.
Even in a significantly challenged environment for all regional sports networks, SNY is likely to see a substantial uptick in viewership and advertising in 2025 due to Soto’s arrival, and perhaps in carriage deals, too.
