MINNEAPOLIS -- The Milwaukee Brewers could benefit if the Minnesota Twins are eliminated, representing a conflict of interest for Brewers' part-owner and baseball commissioner Bud Selig, according to some industry analysts.

The Brewers could benefit by a doubling of the number of households that can watch games on cable TV; by getting a high pick in any dispersal draft triggered by the elimination of teams and, over time, by pocketing more revenue-sharing dollars in the absence of the Twins, Montreal Expos or other franchises.

"It's bad because you want a person who has a broader, longer-term vision and not someone who has a vision occluded by being the owner of a franchise," said Smith College professor Andrew Zimbalist, author of the book "Baseball and Billions."

"No matter what," he said. "You've got a commissioner who has the appearance of a conflict of interest."

Gov. Jesse Ventura is skeptical, as well, saying Friday on his radio show, "If the Twins are gone, doesn't that make Milwaukee a much more viable franchise?"

Team owners could vote as early as Tuesday on whether to buyout Twins owner Carl Pohlad and dismantle the team, according to reports.

Laurel Prieb, the Brewers' vice president of marketing, team spokesman and Selig's son-in-law, said there's no conflict of interest for Selig.

"For anybody who truly knows the commissioner, and knows his passion for the game of baseball and for the job that he has to do, and the trust he has of all the owners, they know he's always doing what's in the best interest of the game. Anyone who knows him wouldn't question" the possibility of a conflict, Prieb said.

Selig continued to operate the Brewers after he was elevated to interim commissioner in 1992. In 1998, when he was officially selected as baseball's ninth commissioner, he resigned as chief executive of the Brewers. He placed his team holdings, reportedly 35 percent of the club, in a blind trust. Trustees vote on his shares.

When Selig is no longer commissioner, his stake in the team will revert to him. His daughter, Wendy Selig-Prieb, operates the team. She is not listed as an investor.

Any new gate revenue for the Brewers because of any potential Twins demise would probably be modest, sports finance experts said.

"This is not going to be a big land grab for Bud Selig's team and his family," said David Carter, a principal in the Sports Business Group, a Los Angeles consulting firm, and a sports business instructor at the University of Southern California.

"Yes, these are both small-market teams. Together, they might make a more compelling market. But I don't think owners around the league would stand for a plan that only benefits Selig," he said.

Of the 2.8 million fans who attended Brewers games this season in the largely publicly financed $400 million Miller Park, 57 percent came from outside of the five-county Milwaukee area. Not counting Twins games in Milwaukee, only about 2 percent of the ticket buyers were from Minnesota, Prieb said.

Michael Megna of Milwaukee, an expert on franchise valuations, said he doesn't think the Brewers' franchise value will rise significantly if the Twins are eliminated.

"The value won't increase until the Brewers build a competitive team," said Megna, who works for potential buyers and sellers of teams. "Once the hysteria of the new facility fades, and they keep losing, what happens then? What happens when they're back to drawing 8,000 people a game?"

But Clark Griffith, who was in charge of marketing the Twins when his father, Calvin Griffith, owned the team from 1961 to 1984, said he believes the Brewers' value would increase because the team's territory would "no longer be hemmed in from the west." The Brewers are already in market-share competition with the Chicago Cubs and White Sox.

The Twin Cities metropolitan area -- which contains nearly 3 million people -- is a much larger market than Milwaukee, which has a metro area of about 1.7 million.

According to Sales and Marketing Management magazine, the Twin Cities area has an annual "effective buying income" of more than $65 billion; Milwaukee's consumers can buy about $32 billion annually.

Twins and Brewers games are both cablecast on the Fox Sports Net. Twins games can be watched in 1.6 million households from western Wisconsin to parts of Iowa and the Dakotas. Brewers games are available in 1.2 million households.