A new $6bn high for the sports boom
Head’s up– a new world record* for the most expensive sport club sale just dropped.
Josh Harris, the billionaire co-founder of Apollo Global Management, is nearing an agreement to buy the National Football League‘s Washington Commanders in a deal valuing the club at close to $6bn. The transaction (*pending league approval) would eclipse last year’s record $4.6bn sale of the NFL’s Denver Broncos to Walmart heir Rob Walton for the top spot for global franchise transactions.
If ratified by fellow NFL owners, it would end a tumultuous and controversial tenure under the stewardship of, who bought the team in 1999 for a then-record $800mn. In the past few years, he’s faced numerous probes into allegations of fostering a toxic workplace environment.
A deal with Harris would wrap one of the strangest sports transactions in recent memory. Several people involved in discussions around the Commanders expressed frustration about the bidding process and its relative lack of transparency compared to other recent sales, including that of Chelsea FC. Complicating the process was the decision by Jeff Bezos, the world’s third-richest person with a net worth of around $125bn, to explore a bid alongside the rapper Jay-Z.
But a sale to Harris would put a well known steward of pro-sports teams in the circle of one of the most elite clubs in the US: the network of NFL owners. Already co-owner, with fellow private equity titan David Blitzer, of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, the NHL’s New Jersey Devils, and the English Premier League’s Crystal Palace FC, Harris was not shy about his ambitions to add an American football team to the roster, as he told Scoreboard at our Business of US Sport conference in October.
Harris is also a minority owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers. That means his financials have effectively been provisionally vetted by the NFL and might make an approval of his purchase speedier. Hedge fund manager David Tepper followed the same playbook — holding a limited stake in the Steelers before buying the Carolina Panthers in 2011.
All the same, the biggest takeaway from the pending Commanders sale is whether such a rapid rise in NFL valuations will put added pressure on the league to consider allowing private capital investment in teams. The NFL, the wealthiest and closest-knit league of owners with strict debt limits on financing and generous revenue sharing amongst teams, is the lone US holdout against institutional investment.
Other US leagues, beginning with Major League Baseball in 2019, began relaxing such rules as club valuations skyrocketed and minority owners searching for liquidity during the pandemic looked for adequately capitalised buyers for such stakes. With American football valuations on the rise, and worries of a potential recession looming, might the NFL be next?