Not so long ago, sports finance was an unprofitable and niche business for private bankers. If a man – and they were always men – with bags of money wanted to buy his local football or baseball team, he might turn to a trusted financial institution in search of funding.
Or he might simply buy it outright, given how little even major sports franchises once cost. In 1985, a syndicate led by sports magnate Jerry Reinsdorf paid just $16 million for the Chicago Bulls, a chronically underperforming basketball team that had nonetheless just drafted one of the greatest athletes of all time, Michael Jordan.
Today, such numbers seem laughably tiny. “The sports business was very sleepy for a very long time,” says Ivo Voynov, global head of sports finance at Citi Private Bank. “In the past 15-20 years, they’ve exploded in terms of valuations and their status in the economic pecking order.
The sports business was very sleepy for a very long time. In the past 15-20 years, they’ve exploded in terms of valuations and their status in the economic pecking order
In 2022, the Denver Broncos, a middling American football team, was sold for $4.65
