New York Times Co. sold more than half its stake in Fenway Sports Group, owner of assets including the Boston Red Sox and the Liverpool Football Club.
New York Times sold 390 of its 700 Class B units for $117 million in cash to three separate buyers, the company said in a filing. It didn’t identify the buyers and said an estimated pretax gain of $64 million will be recorded in the third quarter for the transactions completed yesterday.
Fenway Sports Group owns the Red Sox baseball team, UK soccer team Liverpool of the English Premier League, about 80 percent of the regional sports network that broadcasts Red Sox games and 50 percent of a Nascar racing team. The Red Sox are worth about $912 million, according to Forbes.
Times Co. said in 2009 that it had hired Goldman Sachs to sell its stake in the sports venture. Robert Christie, a New York Times spokesman, said the remainder of the stake is still on the market.