The Dominican baseball professional Juan Soto will soon be the most expensive athlete in the world. He moves from the Yankees to the Mets within New York.
Steve Cohen is a hedge fund manager and has invested in art for years; in 2006 he paid $137.5 million for “Women III” by Willem de Kooning. His current fortune is estimated by Forbes at $21 billion.
The 69-year-old Cohen has now turned his attention to baseball. In November 2020, the New York Mets supporter, the often ridiculed little sister of the record champions New York Yankees, bought his favorite club for $2.4 billion.
Juan Soto is supposed to come from the Yankees
Now Cohen is aiming for a particularly big deal. He wants to pay the heavily sought after batsman Juan Soto $805 million over the next 15 years.
This is a low blow for the Yankees. The 26-year-old Soto played for them last season and led them to the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. The boy wonder from the Dominican Republic, multiple All-Star and 2019 champion with the Washington Nationals, was then a “free agent,” which is why bidding began.
Gigantic sums
The Yankees offered 760 million for 16 years. That wasn’t enough because Cohen offered $765 million for 15 years. In addition, Soto receives 75 million. If he waives the option to exit the contract after five years, his annual salary will increase from an average of $51 million to $55 million.
The contract “changes the sports landscape in New York,” said the New York Post about the historic deal, which even dwarfs the Dodgers’ agreement with Shohei Ohtani. The Japanese signed before last season for ten years and $700 million.