Little more than a week after Rangers owner Tom Hicks said that he was trying to sell up to 49 percent of the Rangers and hockey's Dallas Stars, the holding company that owns the franchises withheld payment on bank loans of $525 million and is trying to restructure the debt.

In a statement from Hicks Sports Group LLC on Friday, Hicks said that the company had decided not to make last week's loan payment, due this past Tuesday.

"We are simply asking the lenders to be reasonable," Hicks said. "They need to understand that these important assets must be managed with a long-term perspective and a commitment to winning. That's in the best interest of the franchises, HSG, our employees and certainly our fans."

Hicks said that this is a "business dispute" with "some 40 lenders" and that it "should have absolutely no impact on the operations of either team or the fan experience at its venues."

"This will be a non-event to players, to the fans, our sponsors, our vendors, anybody," Hicks told The Associated Press. "I'm bringing in minority partners, so I can pay off the loans. I wouldn't normally do that. In this particular environment, that's what we should do."

The Rangers are scheduled to open the regular season at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington on Monday against the Indians.

Hicks owns the Rangers and Stars almost in total, 50 percent of American Airlines Center, where the Stars play, and 50 percent of Liverpool Football Club, an English Premier League soccer team. He said that HSG financials are completely separate from those of the soccer club.

A venture capitalist, Hicks also said that the disagreement didn't affect any of his other business or personal assets. He's the chairman and chief executive of Hicks Holdings LLC, a Dallas-based family office that handles their sports, real estate, corporate assets and investments.

"These issues relate only to HSG," Hicks said. "Like so many other companies and institutions, HSG has been impacted by a global credit crisis, which no one could have anticipated. The company is not asking for additional money; it is only asking for full access to the interest reserve account and revolving credit line as well as some amendments in the debt covenants."

The Rangers were born as the expansion Washington Senators in 1961 and moved to Arlington a decade later. Hicks purchased the baseball team from a group headed by future president George W. Bush in 1998 for $250 million. Last year, Forbes Magazine valued the Rangers at $412 million, 16th among the 30 Major League teams.

Hicks said 10 days ago that he's trying to sell minority shares of the baseball and hockey clubs because of the sliding economy. Like many others, Hicks and his companies have lost money on real estate and other investments during the downturn.

"I've been quietly looking for minority investors to come back into the ownership of the Rangers as a way to be prudent in a bad economy," Hicks said. "I'm doing the same thing with the Stars. At the end of the day, I'll still have 51-to-60 percent of the ballclub and have new partners. That doesn't change anything.

"I own 95 percent of the Rangers. I started out owning 55 percent, and over the past 10 years I've been slowly buying out partners that wanted to sell. There's no reason to own 95 percent. There aren't many owners who own 95 percent."