Todd Boehly – co-owner of the LA Lakers, LA Dodgers and Chelsea Football Club among a range of other teams – is one of the most prolific investors in sports.
Boehly, who made his billions in the private equity industry, sees sports as an ‘asset class’ where valuations only trend in one direction: up and to the right.
Alongside long-time business partner and fellow Chelsea shareholder Mark Walter, he bought the Lakers for $10bn in October last year. A few months earlier, he and another Chelsea investor, Jonathan Goldstein, became the biggest single shareholders in Trent Rockets, an English cricket franchise. Since then, Boehly has been linked with acquiring an IPL team, as well as another soccer team.
Through the private equity firm Eldridge, Boehly also invests in dozens of other sports-adjacent businesses – data, ticketing, stadium infrastructure and so on.
In soccer, his methods have been questioned. But there is no doubting his passion for sport, nor the fact that – for better or for worse – he has a clear vision of where he wants to go.
It would be fitting, therefore, if the Virginia-born 52-year-old became the first person to own stakes in each of the four biggest sports leagues by revenue in the world, namely the NFL, NBA, MLB and Premier League.
Boehly is just one away from the set. And recent reports suggest that he is one of three bidders considering a takeover of the Seattle Seahawks, last season’s Super Bowl champions.
A buyout would cost Boehly $9bn, it is claimed. That would make it the most expensive NFL takeover of all time and, given that his other major investments have been made in tandem with Walter, Boehly’s biggest to date by far.
What the composition of a deal would look like remains to be seen, but the NFL voted to allow private equity firms to take minority stakes in teams last year in a move which could open up the market considerably.
Several other investors own stakes in two or three of the four biggest leagues, but no one has yet branched out to complete the set.
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