For years, owning a professional sports team was, in some form or another, a very personal investment.

When a team was sold and ownership changed hands, the new owner was usually just one person.

Sometimes that ownership would also include a few friends and family members.

Institutions, like hedge funds or private equity firms, were not

allowed to participate in buying a team. And those were still the rules in the National Football

League when Apollo co-founder Josh Harris bought for Washington commanders in 2023.

The NFL was quite restrictive as to they only would allow a certain number of owners,

and then obviously their rules, in essence, vests all of the power, the control, if you will,

in one person because they want to make sure that someone can make decisions on behalf of

the teams.

But these teams are a lot more expensive than they used to be. And the NFL

alone, valuations have tripled in just 10 years. In 2014, the Buffalo bill is traded for $1.4 billion.

The Panthers traded for two and change. And then in, I think, 2022, the Broncos traded for high fours.

Then obviously we bought the commanders at six, 18 months ago.

So buying or investing in a team now requires quite simply a lot more capital.

And over the past 15 years, the professional sports leagues in the U.S. and Europe have slowly

loosened ownership rules to allow private equity and other institutional money to provide

this capital.

In some leagues, institutions can buy a minority stake, while in other leagues it allows for

full ownership.

But when Josh Harris was preparing a bid for the Washington commanders, the NFL was the

holdout.

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