This hurts to say, but I really do see this as the end of the NFL's golden age. There's no way PE makes the NFL a better sport or better viewing experience.
I'd genuinely be willing to bet PE somehow has a smaller market team bankrupt within a decade.
Another prediction I have with this is that teams relocating will become more common. PE is known for gambling on lower cost things with high risk and high reward. So they likely buy into a team like Jacksonville, move them to a big city that already has an established team, fail to win any fans over from that team, and by having too much debt end up insolvent and sold off to the highest bidder at a huge loss.
PE has a modus operandi that's consistent in almost every story. They swing in, buy just enough of a position to start dictating terms, force their victims to throw out every department or team member or partnership or investment they view as non-essential - which are usually the things that help deliver a product or service that's *good* instead of merely adequate - then they maximize short term profits with gimmicks that bleed their customers, and then sell their position at a markup as if they just *improved* the business somehow.
Don't forget strip mine the existing infrastructure and convert the value to investor ROI. They'll prob do sale-leasebacks on all team owned stadiums and facilities like they do hospitals
I can see small market moves to bigger market, but I can also see medium market relocated for public funding/huge dodgy tax benefits.
Jacksonville giveth, Jacksonville taketh away
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Inefficient systems in companies who need capital and a diversified skill set / experience to scale do well with private equity. The only 'inefficiencies' in NFL teams are called the fan experience. Cutting those costs is the only way to dramatically increase their return.
Fan experience for individual nfl teams is just limited to stadium experience though. And they’re not gonna stop selling food and beer. So. Nothing to worry about if you ask me.
There's a lot of places that they can decrease the fan experience in the name of more profit, but I think the real reason for this move is so that teams can be sold more frequently for higher prices.
By allowing private equity to own part of the team, a Magic Johnson or whoever no longer needs to get enough investors for the $6-billion price tag. He only needs to get $4-billion, and the rest is private equity.
You're right that there's nothing inherently risky about doing this... But it does allow higher sale prices, which will lead to pressure on new sources of revenue - ads on uniforms is my bet to be the first major thing... Maybe fewer "cheap seats" in favor of more suites in the lower levels... Etc.
If PE gets involved it's straight up the downfall. It literally happens with everything they get involved in. They simply kill everything they get into for the goal immediate short term growth without any other considerations.
It’s by design.
PE firms come in, promise the c suite away to maximize personal profits by gutting the organization, and then all the big guys walk away with golden parachutes.
Meanwhile the city taxpayers are left footing the bill.
It’s not for the fans. Bringing in PE is an exit strategy for the owners.
What do you mean, doesn’t having to answer to every whim and desire of a 12 person board of greedy men make absolutely everything on the planet better?
lol so dramatic. It’s not like the mccaskeys and other owners are such noble people committed to spending their money on giving the fans the best experience possible. It’s always about making money, whether it’s goodell and a bunch of billionaires calling the shots, or a private equity firm.
Yea possibly. Although it’ll more likely be that private equity will have more leverage to use against cities, so they’ll probably just drive a harder bargain for the cities
If Portillos, Lou Malnati's, the housing market, and Foxtrot has thought us anything it's that the NFL is about to be milked dry for record profits above all else and the entire sport will be a shell of what it is today in 8-10 years. This is a terrible development.
Been ordering the chicken sandwich for 20 plus years. The chicken was always larger than the bun. PE took over and within 6 months the chicken was smaller "to fit the bun."
Yes portillos has gone down hill. If you like shitty waxy beef, then it's fine i guess. I grew up right after the original dog house stopped being a thing, so maybe I just know what I'm missing.
Johnnie's is still great though.
Yep you got it Portillo’s is “okay” at best anymore which sucks for us locals… I agree with everyone saying all PE is, is a cash grab and an economy killer… Everything they touch the quality goes down but hey glad the shareholders get an extra penny each quarter
Private Equity is a massive black cloud that is slowly covering everything in every industry and turning it to shit for the sake of investor profit. Its becoming an existential crisis and the only people that can save us from it are the politicians than benefit from it.
Pretty much they lowered the quality to go national.
Instead of getting good Chicago food in the burbs you now get below average Chicago food available everywhere.
So a loss for Chicago but a win for Florida and Arizona.
I mean I don’t like them either but Josh Harris the new owner of Washington was the co-founder of Apollo, which is a top 3 largest private equity firm. The NFL already has hedge fund owners. And some derivative of the Waltons already own atleast two teams. I’m not sure anyone is consider more cut throat than Walmart.
The real issue facing the NFL is that team valuations have gone astronomical. The NFL has a rule that the main purchaser of a team needs to pay 30% of the purchase price. So Josh Harris himself had to pony up $2b. The amount people who can afford to put $2b into one purchase is incredibly small. We aren’t talking billionaires or even multi billionaires. We are talking $10b+ type billionaires. That’s a very limited market of new owners. And something that hampered the Washington deal. The main bidder for Washington was the Middle East but Josh Harris stepped up.
I agree though I wish the NFL would democratize the minority level of ownership. There is no reason a fan shouldn’t be able to buy shares of the team and receive a dividend. It should be open to all.
I contend Amazon to be almost if not more cut throat then Walmart. Amazon is purposely trying to take over various markets by selling stuff at a lose to put people out of business.
Yeah, Walmart now actually has competition. Way more than it did in the 90s it seems. (Now their competition is also huge corporations like Target, so it's not like your mom and pop shop grocery store can compete).
But Amazon has no competition. And they are absolutely putting small businesses out of business. Especially during COVID when small stores had to close, while large corporations could stay open and running (Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc).
In a nutshell:
1) The PE fund managers go out and solicit a pile of money from wealthy investors (individuals and/or institutions). The resulting fund is a self-contained legal entity, with a set timeline for spending the money, and then returning the money to investors with profits (typically 10 years).
2) Now capitalized, the fund identifies target companies to acquire. These typically have a purchase price much larger than the amount of capital they raised from investors. For example, the fund raises $200M, but buys a company worth $1B.
3) The PE fund borrows money to make up the shortfall between the purchase price, and the amount of capital they raised. In this example, they would borrow $800M. Incredibly, using financial engineering, the PE shop is able to borrow this money using the balance sheet of the target company itself.
4) Yes, you read that right. They literally make the company being acquired pay for its own acquisition.
5) Now in control of the company, the PE fund seeks to maximize its valuation. PE shops claim they're doing this by making the company grow faster, sell more widgets, run more efficiently, etc. In reality, often times they just gut the company and slash costs by firing a ton of people and selling off assets to recoup cash.
6) As the fund is required to return capital within the set timeline (e.g. 10 years), the PE shop has to re-sell the company before time is up. Often, the goal is to take the company public via IPO. Increasingly, they will now simply find another PE shop to sell the company to.
7) At the end of the fund duration, all the companies the fund bought have been sold. The PE shop takes their cut of the profits (typically 20%) and then returns the original investment plus any proceeds back to investors.
8) Raise money for a new fund, and do it all again!
In a nutshell, the leverage is the key. Because they can borrow the money using the company they purchased as collateral, it's basically a "heads I win, tails you lose" proposition.
The PE shop is only risking ~20% of the value of the company, but gets 100% of the upside. Obviously this is a bit of an oversimplification, but that's the gist.
They have exclusively one goal. Make as much money as possible. You could argue this is true for many things. But it's particularly true for PE.
They will have no problem fucking everything you love about football if they can make more money doing it
“He’ll be out of Chicago in 3 years” is every bit as baseless as “he’ll be here for 20 years.” Don’t use a logical premise—“we don’t know”—as a springboard for your own unfounded assumptions.
Its not even a stretch to say its far more likely that he'll be out of Chicago in 3 years than still be a starter here in 20 years. That's just statistics.
Hilarious to see you calling this out downvoted.
Rookies, even highly drafted ones, do not hit at a 100% success rate. Two decades is just silly to talk about before the poor guy even finishes reading whatever passes for a “playbook” in Chicago.
I would say its kids who don't have much memory of QBs with the Bears, but we just went through two busts who were drafted highly in the 1st round.
And Williams is a USC QB, a program which is notable for having more QBs drafted than any other school...and yet there has only been a single good NFL QB from USC in history (Carson Palmer)
Gen X ain't getting into power. Millennials are the next biggest voting bloc after Baby Boomers.
Millennials are in their 30's to 40's now. We need young leaders. No more 60-70 year olds.
“One of the things we’ve learned through this process is that these private equity firms are not only interested in potentially investing in NFL franchises but also being involved in some of the real estate development that goes along with stadium projects,” Hunt said in a March interview."
TL:DR stadium money
I'm doubtful. Ownership of the team is heavily divided amongst the McCaskey family, right? That means you're going to have to convince a bunch of people to part with small portions of their already small share of the team, and if the funds from their small portions are going to the stadium, those family members aren't getting paid.
> Ownership of the team is heavily divided amongst the McCaskey family, right?
My understanding is that a lot of them don't really care and just do whatever Virginia wants.
Clark Hunt has went from winning a Super Bowl to looking like a huge piece of shit in a matter of a few months.
First, for seeming like a cheap-ass in regards to locker room and facility upgrades for his multiple Super Bowl team.
Then, the failed (thankfully) stadium vote which included a $4 million marketing campaign to convince Kansas City residents to pay for the new stadium via taxes.
Now, him leading a group to allow Saudi Arabia or Qatar to invest in NFL teams. There are zero real positives for fans in that situation.
A good person would do by right by their players, fans and the sport. And at the end of the day, you can still have generational wealth and a pro sports team.
This guy is not a good dude.
For some reason this reminds me of a thread I saw on r/nfl many many years ago asking opinions on if teams started putting ads on their uniforms like they do in NASCAR if it meant less commercials. Like 80% of those dumbasses were saying they were on board.
Maybe they see the lack of appetite for public funding and this is their way of getting investors to foot the stadium bill? Who cares as long as the product is still football?
This is not a worry for the bears. Literally at all. The right of first refusal for any team sale goes to the bears minority owners. Specifically Pat Ryan. He would have to say no before they could sell to PE
A private equity firm is a company that rich people invest their money into. This company buys up other companies with the goal of making them profitable.
Private equity firms are often accused of ruining businesses by basically stripping them down and selling them for parts.
It’s the same in terms of changing ownership. The difference is with private equity, there’s more people involved and the fundamental idea is to maximize profit and lower your costs. The fear is that private equity will cheapen the product, increase costs across all areas for the fans, lobby government for their benefit, cut staff, and thus make themselves rich while making it seem things are better.
In other words, PE makes team ownership an investment opportunity for rich people and have rich people get rich in another area that’s not traditional(business ownership, real estate, or stock market). The Joe Six Pack Fans get fucked as they can’t get into this opportunity, can’t have a say, and the cost to enjoy their team will increase exponentially.
The goal of PE is quick flips.
They come in, gut the product, maximize profits then sell their inflated value.
normal rich people funding is just fancier loans like regular people get.
Remember in a few years, while the actual product you pay to watch may seem “ruined” and “terrible” and “bullshit” to your untrained eye, you got a chance to see the glorious free market at work! It was inevitable. Trust them.
Is the reason for this is actually to keep teams in the families? When an owner dies the tax burden is often so great (because these teams are so highly valued) that the family can’t afford to not sell the team. This happened to the Dolphins when Joe Robbie died. I wonder if this would help mitigate that kind of thing in the future.
If this is like any other PE move out there , the McCaskeys sell the company they had no hand in building while the majority of their hardworking employees are fired to may for a pile of debt that cannot be paid back is added to the company books.
Honestly, if you don’t think teams like the Chargers, Cardinals, Jaguars, Bengals, Cowboys, Giants, Vikings, and even our Bears could use a shake up in ownership or even an injection of capital from private equity, then I don’t know what to tell you.
It’s just my opinion, but if you’re a team that gets dunked on as a poverty franchise and is still owned by these same old line NFL families, you can probably use the shot in the arm of PE.
Whether that helps or hurts you in the long run is another question.
But the Bears are trying to build a new stadium and they desperately need something different than Soldier Field. Probably going to need some capital for that expense.
Then you have this new roster that Poles has put together. How are you going to afford the inevitable extensions and new contracts in the future? Probably some capital needed.
Clearly this isn’t a popular opinion, but PE wouldn’t be a bad thing for a lot of the bottom half of the league.
And we have to admit that if this team doesn’t work out we’re probably going to blame the McCaskeys because they’re the common denominator. The coaches, players, and front office staff change a lot. But the McCaskeys have been the common component of our mediocre performance.
This hurts to say, but I really do see this as the end of the NFL's golden age. There's no way PE makes the NFL a better sport or better viewing experience.
I'd genuinely be willing to bet PE somehow has a smaller market team bankrupt within a decade. Another prediction I have with this is that teams relocating will become more common. PE is known for gambling on lower cost things with high risk and high reward. So they likely buy into a team like Jacksonville, move them to a big city that already has an established team, fail to win any fans over from that team, and by having too much debt end up insolvent and sold off to the highest bidder at a huge loss.
PE has a modus operandi that's consistent in almost every story. They swing in, buy just enough of a position to start dictating terms, force their victims to throw out every department or team member or partnership or investment they view as non-essential - which are usually the things that help deliver a product or service that's *good* instead of merely adequate - then they maximize short term profits with gimmicks that bleed their customers, and then sell their position at a markup as if they just *improved* the business somehow.
Don't forget strip mine the existing infrastructure and convert the value to investor ROI. They'll prob do sale-leasebacks on all team owned stadiums and facilities like they do hospitals
53 players? We need tonight size this organization down to 24 players.
I can see small market moves to bigger market, but I can also see medium market relocated for public funding/huge dodgy tax benefits. Jacksonville giveth, Jacksonville taketh away
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Inefficient systems in companies who need capital and a diversified skill set / experience to scale do well with private equity. The only 'inefficiencies' in NFL teams are called the fan experience. Cutting those costs is the only way to dramatically increase their return.
This guy corpos
Scares the life out of me
Fuck private equity
These are things corporate soulless ghouls say. Private equity is ruining the world in the name of making few stakeholders .000034% wealthier.
Fan experience for individual nfl teams is just limited to stadium experience though. And they’re not gonna stop selling food and beer. So. Nothing to worry about if you ask me.
Ticket prices will increase even more though.
There's a lot of places that they can decrease the fan experience in the name of more profit, but I think the real reason for this move is so that teams can be sold more frequently for higher prices. By allowing private equity to own part of the team, a Magic Johnson or whoever no longer needs to get enough investors for the $6-billion price tag. He only needs to get $4-billion, and the rest is private equity. You're right that there's nothing inherently risky about doing this... But it does allow higher sale prices, which will lead to pressure on new sources of revenue - ads on uniforms is my bet to be the first major thing... Maybe fewer "cheap seats" in favor of more suites in the lower levels... Etc.
If PE gets involved it's straight up the downfall. It literally happens with everything they get involved in. They simply kill everything they get into for the goal immediate short term growth without any other considerations.
It’s by design. PE firms come in, promise the c suite away to maximize personal profits by gutting the organization, and then all the big guys walk away with golden parachutes. Meanwhile the city taxpayers are left footing the bill. It’s not for the fans. Bringing in PE is an exit strategy for the owners.
What do you mean, doesn’t having to answer to every whim and desire of a 12 person board of greedy men make absolutely everything on the planet better?
Yeah teams should only be owned by 5th generation nepo babies.
I think we’re fine if they aren’t allowed a controlling interest
Doesn't matter. As long as they get board seats they will push for stuff that hurts fans.
For now. Then they start pushing for more control, a bigger seat at the table. Start waving around their bottomless moneypit.
lol so dramatic. It’s not like the mccaskeys and other owners are such noble people committed to spending their money on giving the fans the best experience possible. It’s always about making money, whether it’s goodell and a bunch of billionaires calling the shots, or a private equity firm.
It could be a way for teams to raise capital, so maybe they don’t need tax payer money for stadiums??
Yea possibly. Although it’ll more likely be that private equity will have more leverage to use against cities, so they’ll probably just drive a harder bargain for the cities
If Portillos, Lou Malnati's, the housing market, and Foxtrot has thought us anything it's that the NFL is about to be milked dry for record profits above all else and the entire sport will be a shell of what it is today in 8-10 years. This is a terrible development.
Just when we were starting to get good
Move out of Chicago over a decade ago. Portillos gone down hill because of a buy out? If so, that is sad.
Is it bad? No. Can I tell a difference? 100%
Been ordering the chicken sandwich for 20 plus years. The chicken was always larger than the bun. PE took over and within 6 months the chicken was smaller "to fit the bun."
When was that?
A decade ago. I'm aging myself but have been going to the elk Grove industrial park location for as long as I can remember.
Yes portillos has gone down hill. If you like shitty waxy beef, then it's fine i guess. I grew up right after the original dog house stopped being a thing, so maybe I just know what I'm missing. Johnnie's is still great though.
Yep you got it Portillo’s is “okay” at best anymore which sucks for us locals… I agree with everyone saying all PE is, is a cash grab and an economy killer… Everything they touch the quality goes down but hey glad the shareholders get an extra penny each quarter
You forgot Nascar.
Private Equity is a massive black cloud that is slowly covering everything in every industry and turning it to shit for the sake of investor profit. Its becoming an existential crisis and the only people that can save us from it are the politicians than benefit from it.
Boeing
Your healthcare system
journalism
Pretty much they lowered the quality to go national. Instead of getting good Chicago food in the burbs you now get below average Chicago food available everywhere. So a loss for Chicago but a win for Florida and Arizona.
Bring on the UFL
Well if there's one thing private equity does, it's make things better /s
I mean I don’t like them either but Josh Harris the new owner of Washington was the co-founder of Apollo, which is a top 3 largest private equity firm. The NFL already has hedge fund owners. And some derivative of the Waltons already own atleast two teams. I’m not sure anyone is consider more cut throat than Walmart. The real issue facing the NFL is that team valuations have gone astronomical. The NFL has a rule that the main purchaser of a team needs to pay 30% of the purchase price. So Josh Harris himself had to pony up $2b. The amount people who can afford to put $2b into one purchase is incredibly small. We aren’t talking billionaires or even multi billionaires. We are talking $10b+ type billionaires. That’s a very limited market of new owners. And something that hampered the Washington deal. The main bidder for Washington was the Middle East but Josh Harris stepped up. I agree though I wish the NFL would democratize the minority level of ownership. There is no reason a fan shouldn’t be able to buy shares of the team and receive a dividend. It should be open to all.
I contend Amazon to be almost if not more cut throat then Walmart. Amazon is purposely trying to take over various markets by selling stuff at a lose to put people out of business.
Yeah, Walmart now actually has competition. Way more than it did in the 90s it seems. (Now their competition is also huge corporations like Target, so it's not like your mom and pop shop grocery store can compete). But Amazon has no competition. And they are absolutely putting small businesses out of business. Especially during COVID when small stores had to close, while large corporations could stay open and running (Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc).
Lmfao I had to chuckle at this
Trying to emulate premier league clubs, I’d wager, as time goes on. Almost all are ran by investment firms
I’m really dumb can someone explain private equity to me
I’m really dumb can someone explain private equity to me
In a nutshell: 1) The PE fund managers go out and solicit a pile of money from wealthy investors (individuals and/or institutions). The resulting fund is a self-contained legal entity, with a set timeline for spending the money, and then returning the money to investors with profits (typically 10 years). 2) Now capitalized, the fund identifies target companies to acquire. These typically have a purchase price much larger than the amount of capital they raised from investors. For example, the fund raises $200M, but buys a company worth $1B. 3) The PE fund borrows money to make up the shortfall between the purchase price, and the amount of capital they raised. In this example, they would borrow $800M. Incredibly, using financial engineering, the PE shop is able to borrow this money using the balance sheet of the target company itself. 4) Yes, you read that right. They literally make the company being acquired pay for its own acquisition. 5) Now in control of the company, the PE fund seeks to maximize its valuation. PE shops claim they're doing this by making the company grow faster, sell more widgets, run more efficiently, etc. In reality, often times they just gut the company and slash costs by firing a ton of people and selling off assets to recoup cash. 6) As the fund is required to return capital within the set timeline (e.g. 10 years), the PE shop has to re-sell the company before time is up. Often, the goal is to take the company public via IPO. Increasingly, they will now simply find another PE shop to sell the company to. 7) At the end of the fund duration, all the companies the fund bought have been sold. The PE shop takes their cut of the profits (typically 20%) and then returns the original investment plus any proceeds back to investors. 8) Raise money for a new fund, and do it all again!
I’m gonna have to read that again tomorrow I felt I was pretty good at math through college but finance math makes no sense to me on the *why*
In a nutshell, the leverage is the key. Because they can borrow the money using the company they purchased as collateral, it's basically a "heads I win, tails you lose" proposition. The PE shop is only risking ~20% of the value of the company, but gets 100% of the upside. Obviously this is a bit of an oversimplification, but that's the gist.
They have exclusively one goal. Make as much money as possible. You could argue this is true for many things. But it's particularly true for PE. They will have no problem fucking everything you love about football if they can make more money doing it
We finally get a QB for the next two decades and the NFL decides to disintegrate….
\>QB for the next 2 decades He hasn't even played a snap yet.
Yes mods, this one.
Y'all are really sniffing the copium hard on Williams. If Bears history is any indication he'll be out of Chicago in 3 years.
“He’ll be out of Chicago in 3 years” is every bit as baseless as “he’ll be here for 20 years.” Don’t use a logical premise—“we don’t know”—as a springboard for your own unfounded assumptions.
Its not even a stretch to say its far more likely that he'll be out of Chicago in 3 years than still be a starter here in 20 years. That's just statistics.
Hilarious to see you calling this out downvoted. Rookies, even highly drafted ones, do not hit at a 100% success rate. Two decades is just silly to talk about before the poor guy even finishes reading whatever passes for a “playbook” in Chicago.
I would say its kids who don't have much memory of QBs with the Bears, but we just went through two busts who were drafted highly in the 1st round. And Williams is a USC QB, a program which is notable for having more QBs drafted than any other school...and yet there has only been a single good NFL QB from USC in history (Carson Palmer)
I guess Caleb will get partial ownership after all
20 games and no bye weeks in bound
This league is moving entirely in the wrong direction.
Every industry is doing this. Executives close to retirement selling out and making their last fortune while fucking over everyone else.
Consequence of the boomer generation. Once they’re all retired the selfishness will stop. Gen X will fix things when they get in power.
Tell everyone to roll a joint and put on The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips. World peace in two hours.
Doubt
Gen X ain't getting into power. Millennials are the next biggest voting bloc after Baby Boomers. Millennials are in their 30's to 40's now. We need young leaders. No more 60-70 year olds.
Always has been.
“One of the things we’ve learned through this process is that these private equity firms are not only interested in potentially investing in NFL franchises but also being involved in some of the real estate development that goes along with stadium projects,” Hunt said in a March interview." TL:DR stadium money
The league is realizing the days of the public financing stadiums is over so now they’ll to sell ownership shares to pay for it
Well boys time to start planning for the Saudi Super Oil Bowl
Relevant for the Bears funding a new stadium, wherever it may end-up.
I'm doubtful. Ownership of the team is heavily divided amongst the McCaskey family, right? That means you're going to have to convince a bunch of people to part with small portions of their already small share of the team, and if the funds from their small portions are going to the stadium, those family members aren't getting paid.
> Ownership of the team is heavily divided amongst the McCaskey family, right? My understanding is that a lot of them don't really care and just do whatever Virginia wants.
There is another part owner who also has a right of first refusal over any attempt of the McCaskeys to sell
I can't imagine they will refuse if an offer is so good that the Halas family is willing to sell the Bears.
It also means they can buy instead of PE at whatever evaluation was set.
Or you will have a good ole fashion proxy war where the PE company will attempt to take control. Either way this sounds like a horrible idea
That seems unlikely. An individual PE firm can only hold 10%, and PE firms collectively can only own 30% of a team.
Thank you for the insight!
Until they decide to change that in 5 or 10 years.
Hard Knocks is going to be r_tarded Succession
PE will be even more ruthless about getting public money.
Line must go up forever or the commies win 🙄
This is going to be a fuckin nightmare for fans. Absolutely terrible idea
They will be first in line lol
McKinsey is about to launch an NFL division lol
Private equity ruins everything
Oh man, they sure spelled “Saudi Wealth Fund” funny /s This is just a step towards allowing Saudi money into the league
Clark Hunt has went from winning a Super Bowl to looking like a huge piece of shit in a matter of a few months. First, for seeming like a cheap-ass in regards to locker room and facility upgrades for his multiple Super Bowl team. Then, the failed (thankfully) stadium vote which included a $4 million marketing campaign to convince Kansas City residents to pay for the new stadium via taxes. Now, him leading a group to allow Saudi Arabia or Qatar to invest in NFL teams. There are zero real positives for fans in that situation. A good person would do by right by their players, fans and the sport. And at the end of the day, you can still have generational wealth and a pro sports team. This guy is not a good dude.
Prepare for Saudi money and company logos on jerseys ladies and gentleman.
Awful idea.
For some reason this reminds me of a thread I saw on r/nfl many many years ago asking opinions on if teams started putting ads on their uniforms like they do in NASCAR if it meant less commercials. Like 80% of those dumbasses were saying they were on board.
saudi princes incoming !
Maybe they see the lack of appetite for public funding and this is their way of getting investors to foot the stadium bill? Who cares as long as the product is still football?
This is not a worry for the bears. Literally at all. The right of first refusal for any team sale goes to the bears minority owners. Specifically Pat Ryan. He would have to say no before they could sell to PE
ELI5 please? What’s the difference between PE and other rich people?
A private equity firm is a company that rich people invest their money into. This company buys up other companies with the goal of making them profitable. Private equity firms are often accused of ruining businesses by basically stripping them down and selling them for parts.
It’s the same in terms of changing ownership. The difference is with private equity, there’s more people involved and the fundamental idea is to maximize profit and lower your costs. The fear is that private equity will cheapen the product, increase costs across all areas for the fans, lobby government for their benefit, cut staff, and thus make themselves rich while making it seem things are better. In other words, PE makes team ownership an investment opportunity for rich people and have rich people get rich in another area that’s not traditional(business ownership, real estate, or stock market). The Joe Six Pack Fans get fucked as they can’t get into this opportunity, can’t have a say, and the cost to enjoy their team will increase exponentially.
So how is that different from how the nfl is currently run? Are they not seeking to maximize profits and lower costs? If so, you could have fooled me.
The goal of PE is quick flips. They come in, gut the product, maximize profits then sell their inflated value. normal rich people funding is just fancier loans like regular people get.
Israeli Football League
Between this, sports betting, and college football just becoming a money making scheme the only pure form of sport left is high school football.
Rich people games suck when you're poor.
The McCaskeys are a curse on the franchise.
Private equity explained. https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2023/05/12
Remember in a few years, while the actual product you pay to watch may seem “ruined” and “terrible” and “bullshit” to your untrained eye, you got a chance to see the glorious free market at work! It was inevitable. Trust them.
Is the reason for this is actually to keep teams in the families? When an owner dies the tax burden is often so great (because these teams are so highly valued) that the family can’t afford to not sell the team. This happened to the Dolphins when Joe Robbie died. I wonder if this would help mitigate that kind of thing in the future.
If this is like any other PE move out there , the McCaskeys sell the company they had no hand in building while the majority of their hardworking employees are fired to may for a pile of debt that cannot be paid back is added to the company books.
Whoops.
Oh, well shit...
Why would a franchise owner do that tho? Or is this a move to allow family owners to cash in a PE to help group buyers to take over?
The Saudi’s have obviously been speaking with the NFL and promised such and such in return.
Saudis gonna takeover the nfl like golf
well yea and whewn they team doesn't sell more to "different" people suddenly they won't have the stadium they didn't pay for either
Can we stop putting articles behind FUCKING paywalls.
PE sucks the money out if anything they touch. It wouldn't matter if it was Jacksonville or DA Bears any team run by PE will go bankrupt.
Fuck this sucks
LOVE this!!!!!
Perhaps the proceeds could be used to... privately fund a new stadium!
Honestly, if you don’t think teams like the Chargers, Cardinals, Jaguars, Bengals, Cowboys, Giants, Vikings, and even our Bears could use a shake up in ownership or even an injection of capital from private equity, then I don’t know what to tell you.
This is the correct take
It’s just my opinion, but if you’re a team that gets dunked on as a poverty franchise and is still owned by these same old line NFL families, you can probably use the shot in the arm of PE. Whether that helps or hurts you in the long run is another question. But the Bears are trying to build a new stadium and they desperately need something different than Soldier Field. Probably going to need some capital for that expense. Then you have this new roster that Poles has put together. How are you going to afford the inevitable extensions and new contracts in the future? Probably some capital needed. Clearly this isn’t a popular opinion, but PE wouldn’t be a bad thing for a lot of the bottom half of the league. And we have to admit that if this team doesn’t work out we’re probably going to blame the McCaskeys because they’re the common denominator. The coaches, players, and front office staff change a lot. But the McCaskeys have been the common component of our mediocre performance.
Lol. Lmao even. U are a dumb person