Want To Own An NFL Team? That Could Become a Possibility

Owning a National Football League team would be a dream come true for most fans. Alas, only a handful of people have the financial clout to pull it off.

NFL

franchise values have skyrocketed. The

Washington Commanders

recently sold for slightly more than $6 billion, a record for a North American sports organization.

Unless you find yourself near the top of the leaderboard on the Forbes real-time billionaires list, odds are you can’t even begin to entertain the thought of joining the ranks of the NFL’s ownership groups.

That is not just a problem for us monetary mortals. It’s becoming a real problem for the league itself.

Most folks who own NFL teams are not exactly spring chickens. Over the next several years, it’s extremely likely that multiple franchises will be put up for sale.

A smaller group of potential owners keeps prices down because it eliminated marketplace competition and leaving money on the table is NOT in professional football’s business plan.

So, with a miniscule group of people capable of buying something with a multi-billion dollar price tag, the league is starting to think outside the box.

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The NFL is Looking to Expand its Ownership Options

Teams are getting almost too expensive to sell to a sole owner.

According to a recent Sportico report, the National Football League is taking meetings with private equity groups to investigate whether or not the league wants to start allowing teams to be owned by institutional money.

In a nutshell, private equity companies pool funds to purchase a business with the goal of restructuring it, then selling it for a profit at a future date.

In the professional sports landscape, it would be a slightly different business model.

As of 2024, the NFL is the only major North American league that does not allow institutional ownership.

Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and Major League Soccer are all OK with equity firms owning teams. All of them allow private equity firms to own up to 30% of the team.

The NFL is talking about starting with institutions to own up to 10% of a club, which would still be in the $600 million – $1 billion range if teams continue to appreciate.

So, this does not mean that one private equity firm would pony up $10 billion to buy the

New England Patriots

or anything like that.

What it more likely means, is teams would be diversifying their purchase options when they put a club up for sale, and there are other factors being discussed, as well.

Taking Some of The Burden Off One Individual

The NFL could lower the total a principal owner must control.

Right now, the NFL requires a principal owner to have a 30% stake. As part of these talks, the league would reportedly consider dropping that number to around 10%.

If those numbers hold true then it means there would be a world where a private equity company could be the principal owner of a National Football League team.

Which brings us to how all of us might be able to be team owners. This is not a Green Bay Packers situation where the team is publicly owned and occasionally shares become available for purchase. Private equity organizations still have rules and benchmarks potential investors need to hit. According to www.investor.gov the financial bar is still fairly high:

Now, that might sound discouraging, and for most of us, it is. However, each firm has its own set of rules and the bottom line is, if this happens, the threshold for getting involved would be MUCH lower than needing to have “I co-founded Microsoft” money to get into the ownership game.

If the meetings go well, it is possible the league will call its current 32 owners together for a vote on the topic by the end of the year.

Odds are there would be no shortage of firms jockeying for position to align themselves with the richest sports league in the nation. So, just in case, you all might want to get your portfolios up to date.

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