Key Sentence:
- For a select group of billionaires, there is no more apparent sign of success than Owning a professional sports team.
Not only does this mean that you’ve built (or inherited) a billion-dollar business, but you also have enough extra cash to use hundreds of millions of dollars – or in some cases, billions of dollars – to buy rare American assets.
There are 150 professional sports teams under the National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, and Major League Football. Forbes has found more than 40 billionaires hold a controlling stake in these teams – a bet that has proven to be an excellent investment for many of these owners.
Some of the wealthiest professional sports team owners have been able to take advantage of the US tax bill, reducing their tax burden to rates that are sometimes lower than player data or even stadium workers. Some team owners have deducted nearly their entire team’s purchase price from taxes on their future profits, ProPublica notes, a solid amount, with NFL teams worth more than $2 billion while NBA teams are worth at least 1 billion dollars in costs. Others use their team’s reported losses as write-offs to pay less tax on their other wins.
Meanwhile, the wealth of these billionaires and the value of their group had increased significantly. Among those named in the ProPublica report are Steve Ballmer, owner of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers; David Tepper, owner of the NFL Carolina Panthers; Dan Gilbert, owner of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers; and Shahid Khan, owner of the NFL’s Jaguars Jacksonville. Since their current owners purchased these teams, their value has increased by an average of $155 million – annually. That’s how wealthy these billionaires have been since taking over their team. (Billionaire net worth is July 12, 2021)