While Nintendo may have originated in Japan, the gaming giant has housed its Nintendo of America offices in the state of Washington for a long time now, which made their ownership of the Seattle Mariners a no-brainer. Nintendo had already announced awhile back they were scaling back their ownership of the team and after the recent announcement of the sale of the majority of shares, we now know just how much they sold off the team for.
As revealed through the official Nintendo website, they have sold off 45% of their 55% of shares of the Seattle Mariners for $661 million. This means they no longer own the team as a majority owner, but still do hold 10% of the team’s shares.
This deal has officially been closed after approval from Major League Baseball, and Nintendo says they will have to wait and see what kind of financial impact this sale has on the company’s financial performance. This is something we should see in the next quarterly financial earnings release from Nintendo, which we will definitely be interested to see.
As previously reported by GameSpot, the majority of the shares were sold to First Avenue Entertainment. In addition to this sale of the team, CEO Howard Lincoln has stepped down with majority owner John Stanton replacing him as CEO and chairman.
