Seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady wants to co-own a National Football League franchise. Eli Manning, who led the underdog New York Giants to two Super Bowl victories against Brady and the New England Patriots, also wants to buy a team.
The rival quarterbacks, now retired, are emerging as likely bidders just as the NFL reevaluates its strict ownership rules.
For years, the NFL stiff-armed private equity firms that wanted a seat at the negotiating table. It also banned public corporations and sovereign wealth funds. And it required a team’s primary owner to hold at least a 30% stake in a franchise.
When NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell asked a committee to vote on tweaking those rules last month, a Who’s Who of NFL owners gathered in Nashville, Tennessee: Clark Hunt of the Kansas City Chiefs, Robert Kraft of the Patriots, Arthur Blank of the Atlanta Falcons, Jimmy Haslam of the Cleveland Browns, and Greg Penner of the Denver Broncos.
But the vote was delayed. Goodell subsequently confirmed, cryptically, that the group expects “something” by the end of 2024.
Specifics still need to be ironed out. How large a stake could a private equity firm buy? How many teams could a single firm invest in? How many firms could invest in one team? The answers are not yet known.
Several firms—Arctos Partners, Ares Management, Avenue Capital Group, the Carlyle Group, and CVC Capital Partners—were reportedly involved in the discussions.
The private equity industry, which counts Manning’s Brand Velocity Group, has some $4 trillion in so-called dry powder at its disposal. Proponents of the rule changes argue that the new money could back large projects, like new stadiums.
Owners also think selling minority stakes to private equity firms—commonplace in other sports—could mean quicker exits and less tax. In recent years, the NFL has kept several deep-pocketed private equity investors on the sidelines, however, including Josh Harris, who offered to buy the Washington Commanders for $6 billion; Clearlake Capital Group, which lost the Broncos auction to Walmart heir Rob Walton, for $4.65 billion; and Ben Navarro, who lost out on the Carolina Panthers to billionaire David Tepper’s $2.3 billion offer.
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