When Tom Hicks was owner of Texas Rangers, his desire to win compelled him to sign Alex Rodriguez to the largest deal in baseball history.
It didn’t pan out. In fact, most of the moves that he made during his ownership didn’t pan out. He should get credit for being the owner that signed off on the promotion of Jon Daniels to general manager in 2005, the hiring of Ron Washington in 2007 and the hiring of Nolan Ryan as team president in 2008. He arranged the chairs for the Rangers to make back-to-back World Series appearances, which came after he lost the team after his 2009 bankruptcy.
Tom Hicks and TV
By 1999, Hicks owned both the Texas Rangers and the Dallas Stars and had formed Southwest Sports Group as an umbrella company to manage both. At the time, he was considering going it alone when it came to television and forming his own cable TV sports channel for Rangers and Stars game.
He may have been serious. He may have been bluffing. But it was enough to get Fox Sports Southwest, which was airing Rangers and Stars games at the time, to the table to give Hicks what was a massive deal at the time — a 15-year deal for an estimated $250 million. It wasn’t that much back then. But it helped offset the cost of the Rodriguez deal, along with the contract for pitcher Chan Ho Park, signed the next year to a significant free agent deal.
The deal made the Rangers significant players in the regional sports network game. It cultivated a relationship with Fox, which was eventually bought by Diamond Sports Group and became Bally’s Sports Southwest. It also set the stage for a massive extension that came in 2010 after Hicks left the franchise. That deal, as reported by Chron.com, was a 20-year contract extension worth $1.6 billion that would pay the Rangers $80 million per year to spend on players.
That deal was still in place when the Rangers shelled out more than $500 million in 2021 for Seager and Semien, who were cornerstones of the World Series champions in 2023.
The deal is dead now. It died when DSG filed for bankruptcy and its regional sports network died after the 2024 season. In 2025, the Rangers started their own network — the Rangers Sports Network — which expanded access to games that were an issue for viewers when DSG owned the network. But it’s unclear how much the new network generated for the franchise. Texas is in cost-cutting mode when it comes to payroll going into 2026.
But, for a quarter-century the Rangers had money to spend, thanks to Hicks, both while he owned the team and long after he left.
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