Trump once tried to buy the Minnesota Twins. His new budget bill could complicate team’s sale.

In 1983, Donald Trump made a $50 million offer to buy the Minnesota Twins, a deal the businessman-turned-president failed to seal.

Now, Trump’s signature policy bill could end up punishing the next owner of the MLB team as well as another for-sale Minneapolis pro franchise.

A tax benefit sports team owners have used to reduce their overall taxes would be cut in half under the big budget bill recently passed by the House of Representatives. The move would raise nearly $1 billion in revenue through the next decade, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, and only affect those who buy teams after the law took effect.

For the next owners of the Twins and the NBA/WNBA Timberwolves/Lynx organization, it’s a race to the finish line to keep the lucrative tax break intact.

The Pohlads have owned the Twins for four decades after buying the team for $44 million in 1984. The Minnesota family put the team up for sale last year, originally hoping to sell by Opening Day this spring. Insiders said last week a sale is “closer to the end than to the beginning,” as buyers look at Target Field and meet with the Pohlads.

Meanwhile, the Timberwolves and Lynx recently emerged from a much lengthier sale process, with former MLB star Alex Rodriguez and entrepreneur Marc Lore winning an arbitration ruling allowing the process to continue. Billionaire Glen Taylor, who also owns the Minnesota Star Tribune, bought the team in 1994 for $94 million. He agreed to sell the franchise to Rodriguez and Lore in 2021 for $1.5 billion but later called it off because of an alleged breach of contract, an argument that he lost in arbitration.

The transaction has yet to close, and the NBA Board of Governors still has to vote to approve the sale.

Jim Pohlad, executive chair of the Twins, and a representative for Lore did not return calls seeking comment.

The clock is ticking on potentially millions in annual tax savings for the next owners of Minnesota’s NBA and MLB franchises.

“Any deals I’m in, I’d be pushing buy or sell to move fast,” said David Sunkin, a sports industry attorney at Sheppard Mullin. “The seller wants to maintain that good price and the buyers want to maintain that tax treatment.”

Currently, team owners are allowed to write off much of the market value of their franchise over 15 years. That can translate into losses on paper, even if the team turns an actual profit, which can offset the owner’s financial gains elsewhere and reduce taxable income.

The House bill would cut that widely used business tax benefit in half for sports teams, allowing owners to deduct just half of a team’s intangible assets through 15 years. That accounts for the value of a team beyond the physical property it owns: Player contracts, media deals, intellectual property, the fan base and more.

Garrett Watson, policy analysis director at the Tax Foundation, said the prices of sports franchises could “likely go down, at least to partially account for this tax penalty.”

“Ownership of sports franchises may look less attractive moving forward,” he said.

While the loss of millions in financial benefits might scare off potential buyers, or deflate the value of teams going forward, the economics of major team ownership often comes down to an extremely limited supply and ample demand.

“In traditional economic theory, you would say the asset is less valuable because it has lost an attribute of value [in the tax benefit],” said Irwin Kishner, co-chair of the sports law group at Herrick. “But then there’s supply and demand. I don’t think we’re going to have to hold a bake sale for professional sports teams anytime soon.”

Kishner expects there to be good competition for the Twins, with a projected sales price of $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion.

“It’s a very worthwhile thing to own,” he said. “Owning a major sports team has proven time and again to be a darn good investment.”

Sunkin said the tax break has been a nice benefit for team owners, but he doesn’t see it as the main reason to put billions into a sports club.

“It’s capital appreciation. It’s the exclusivity. That doesn’t change,” he said. “And people like it. It’s fun. Those fundamentals don’t really change.”

Private equity might be more hesitant to join in, however, and those institutional investors are often crucial minority partners to help pay ballooning franchise costs.

The U.S. Senate still has to approve the bill, and Sunkin said the NFL is being “aggressive” in encouraging team owners to talk to senators about dropping the tax change.

For Minnesota sports deals, the tax threat could spark a speedy wrap-up of the unexpectedly lengthy sale process for the Twins.

“When deals are slowing down to the finish line, there needs to be some kind of impetus to get off the ‘nice to have’ deal points because there’s something going on,” Sunkin said. “If the Twins don’t find a buyer, I don’t think it’s because of a 50 percent reduction in the intangible write-off.”