Alex Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez End Bid to Purchase New York Mets

Alex Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez will not be the new owners of the New York Mets. According to the New York Post, the couple has ended their bid to buy the team. The decision to end their bid came after “negotiations with potential partners failed to materialize” and it was clear the Wilpon family did not want to part ways with SportsNet New York (SNY). As a result, Rodrigues and Lopez did not have the firepower to move forward with the process.

One of the problems Rodriguez and Lopez had was reportedly their money partner; Long Island biotech billionaire Wayne Rothbaum said he was only interested in buying the Mets at a discounted price. He also wanted more control of the team than Rodriguez and Lopez were comfortable with. “The Rothbaum thing soured fast,” a source told the New York Post. “He was not their first choice, but he was the first to agree to next steps.” With the coronavirus pandemic going on, baseball has been put on hold, which makes it difficult to evaluate the Mets. It’s unlikely the team will be sold in the foreseeable future.

In April it was reported Rodriguez and Lopez’s attempt to buy the Mets hit a major snag when the Wilpons wouldn’t sell SNY, the company that broadcasts Mets games. The team was losing $90 million per season, but the Wilpons were making up for the losses with the revenue made by SNY. If the couple won the bid, Rodriguez, who spent the majority of his career with the Seattle Mariners and New York Yankees, would have worked more on the player’s side of things instead of the business side.

Along with not buying the Mets, the power couple have put their wedding on hold. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Rodriguez and Lopez have postponed their Italian wedding, which was reportedly scheduled to happen this summer. It’s not known when they will reschedule the wedding.

“They have been struggling for weeks over this decision, but with no return to normalcy in the near future, the couple felt postponing the wedding was the safest and smartest choice,” a source told E! News about their wedding plans. “Guests have recently been notified that the wedding will not be happening in late summer as anticipated.” Rodriguez, 44, and Lopez, 50, started dating in February 2017 and got engaged in March 2019.