FOS PM: New Broncos Owner Decided? – Front Office Sports

June 6, 2022

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Phil Mickelson is joining the inaugural LIV Golf Invitational Series. The six-time major champion will compete in the series’ first event, which starts Thursday at the Centurion Club near London.

Second-round bids for the Denver Broncos are due by 5 p.m. ET on Monday, and Forbes reported that a group led by Rob Walton will become the team’s next owner.

Walton’s bid will reportedly be worth around $4.5 billion — the most ever spent for a U.S. team and second-most for any professional sports team. A consortium led by U.S. billionaire Todd Boehly purchased the Premier League’s Chelsea FC for $5.4 billion last month. 

A source with knowledge of the process cautioned declaring Walton, son of Walmart founder Sam Walton, the team’s new owner since the report came before any of the four expected groups submitted their final bids. 

With an estimated net worth of $59.1 billion, Walton has more spare change than his competition.

• Josh Harris, an owner and founder of Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment — the company that owns the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils — is leading a bidding group. Harris’ reported net worth is $5.6 billion.
• Clearlake Capital co-founder Jose E. Feliciano and his business partner Behdad Eghbali are leading another group. Each carries a net worth of $3.4 billion.
• The fourth presumed finalist is a group led by United Wholesale Mortgage CEO Mat Ishbia, who has an estimated net worth of $4.6 billion.

Tight Timeline

As of 11 a.m. Monday, no official bids had been made as the groups are expected to wait until closer to the deadline. It’s expected the winner would be chosen “in the very near future,” a source told Front Office Sports.

The Big 12 Conference will distribute a record $426 million in revenue to its 10 schools for the 2021-22 academic year.

The record revenue follows the return of fans to stadiums amid the pandemic. 

• 2021-22 marked the first growth in revenue for the Big 12 in two years.
• It is nearly a 25% increase in revenue compared to the year prior. 

The good fortune comes on the heels of imminent changes within the Big 12. The conference is losing Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC in 2025 but is preparing to add four new members. 

In September 2021, the Big 12’s continuing members voted unanimously to invite four schools to join the conference: Cincinnati, UCF, Houston, and BYU. 

Three of the Big 12’s newest programs — Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF — are working on a settlement to leave the AAC on July 1, 2023, which would be a year ahead of schedule. The group was initially scheduled to join the Big 12 on July 1, 2024, due to AAC bylaws that require schools to provide a 27-month notice and a $10 million fee to join another conference. 

The settlement could range between $17 million and $20 million, per the Action Network.

New Leadership 

In April, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby announced he would step down from his position later this year after accepting the role in 2012.

The Big 12 hopes to have a new commissioner by mid-July, when the conference hosts its media days for the upcoming football season.

Tom Brady’s NFL career isn’t over, but his entertainment endeavors are expanding.

Religion of Sports, the media company founded by Brady, NFL Hall of Famer Michael Strahan, and filmmaker Gotham Chopra, has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round, bringing the company’s total funding to $66 million.

• Shamrock Capital led the round with participation from Cerro Capital, Elysian Park Ventures, and Advancit Capital. The latter two were also part of the company’s $13 million Series A round.
• A valuation was not announced, but CEO Ameeth Sankaran said that reports that the company was now worth $100 million were “far low.”

“What Shamrock brings is a level of operational depth and experience in the media space that we don’t necessarily have on our current senior team or board,” Sankaran told Front Office Sports.

Creative Edge

“We feel like relative to our competitors, we’re differentiated by being a creator-friendly place,” said Sankaran. He added that some of the fresh capital could go toward “acquiring businesses that have a similar creative point of view and voice.”

Religion of Sports has partnered with Netflix, ESPN, Showtime, Apple+, and Amazon, among others. The funding round could help the company take more creative control over its content.

“We’re working with a particular athlete, for example, and invest in two years of filming great content, and then have something that we’re really proud of that we bring to market and have a lot of control over the shape and creative narrative,” said Sankaran.