Why Private Equity Wants to Own Sports Teams—even When It Can’t Control Them

Practical Explainer | September 12, 2026

Private equity is usually associated with control.

A fund buys a company, changes the strategy, installs or replaces management, cuts costs, makes acquisitions, increases earnings and eventually sells the business.

Then there are sports teams.

In major U.S. leagues, a private-equity fund may invest hundreds of millions of dollars and receive no control over the roster, no vote on major league matters and, in some cases, no meaningful role in day-to-day operations at all.

And the funds are still lining up.

That sounds strange until you understand what they are actually buying.

They are buying a piece of an asset that is extraordinarily difficult to replicate, generates multiple recurring revenue streams, benefits from league-level economics, attracts emotionally committed customers and has historically become more valuable as the number of people capable of buying it has grown.

In other words, private equity is not necessarily betting on next season’s record.

It is betting that there will still be only one New York Yankees, one Boston Celtics and one Dallas Cowboys twenty years from now.

Private equity wants sports teams for five basic reasons:

Scarcity. Major leagues tightly control the creation of new franchises. You cannot simply build another NFL team because demand for football is strong.

Recurring revenue. Media rights, sponsorships, ticketing, premium seating, licensing, league distributions and increasingly adjacent businesses can create multiple layers of revenue.

Long-term appreciation. Franchise values have risen dramatically as sports have attracted more billionaires, family offices, sovereign investors and institutional capital. PwC identifies limited supply combined with expanding demand as a major driver of sports valuations.

Portfolio exposure. A fund can gain access to the economics of an elite franchise without financing a multibillion-dollar control acquisition.

Liquidity for existing owners. Minority sales let controlling owners turn part of an enormously valuable—but otherwise illiquid—asset into cash without selling the team.

That last point explains why teams want private equity almost as much as private equity wants teams.

This phrase can describe several very different things.

Suppose Jane Smith founded a private-equity firm and later uses her personal fortune to buy 60% of a basketball team.

That does not necessarily mean her private-equity fund owns the team.

Now suppose Smith Capital Fund VII, whose money comes from pension funds, endowments, family offices and other limited partners, purchases 15% of that same franchise.

That is institutional private-equity ownership.

The distinction matters because professional leagues impose special rules on investment funds that may not apply in the same way to wealthy individuals.

A third structure is increasingly important: the investor buys not simply an interest in the team, but an interest in a parent company containing multiple assets.

The Miami Dolphins transaction illustrates the point. In 2024, Ares Management acquired a 10% interest in a portfolio that included the Dolphins, Hard Rock Stadium and the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix.

So the first question in any sports-ownership deal is deceptively simple:

What exactly is being purchased?

The franchise? The stadium? A regional sports network? Real estate? A holding company? Related entertainment businesses?

“Ten percent of the team” and “ten percent of the sports enterprise” can be very different investments.

Imagine a restaurant generating spectacular returns.

Competitors notice. New restaurants open. Supply increases.

Professional sports do not work that way.

The NFL has 32 franchises. The NBA has 30. Expansion happens only when the league decides it should happen.

That makes an established franchise something closer to a controlled license inside a closed ecosystem than an ordinary operating company.

And because franchises rarely become available, buyers cannot simply wait for an identical substitute.

If you want an NBA franchise, there are only so many opportunities.

If you specifically want one in Boston, there is exactly one.

That scarcity matters enormously to valuation.

It helps explain how the Celtics ownership group that acquired the franchise for approximately $360 million in 2002 could sell controlling ownership in a 2025 transaction valued initially at more than $6.1 billion.

There is no guarantee that past appreciation will continue. But private-equity investors do not need to believe sports values will rise forever.

They need to believe that premium franchises will remain scarce while the amount of capital chasing them remains large.

A team can miss the playoffs and still receive league-level revenue.

That is another unusual feature of sports investing.

Franchise economics vary dramatically by league, market and ownership structure, but revenue can come from several sources:

Some of the most valuable revenue is negotiated collectively.

The NFL's national media agreements with Amazon, CBS, ESPN/ABC, Fox and NBC run through the 2033 season.

The NBA's current agreements with Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon run through the 2035-36 season.

That does not make sports risk-free. Local-media disruption has been particularly significant in baseball and basketball, and media markets are changing rapidly.

But long-duration contracts can give investors something private equity values highly: visibility.

Nobody knows who will win the championship in 2031.

Investors can nevertheless know that valuable live games will exist in 2031—and that broadcasters, streaming platforms, advertisers and sponsors will still want access to them.

Most entertainment content can be consumed later.

Sports lose much of their value the moment the result is known.

That makes premium live sports unusually resistant to the fragmentation that has disrupted other forms of media.

Streaming has not eliminated sports rights. It has created additional bidders for them.

The NBA's current national package, for example, places games across traditional broadcast television and streaming platforms including Peacock and Prime Video.

For an investor, the important point is not whether television defeats streaming.

It is that multiple distribution platforms need programming that people insist on watching live.

Sports supply it.

There is a strange consequence when a sports franchise becomes extremely valuable:

Being worth more can make it harder to sell.

A $500 million team has many more potential purchasers than a $10 billion team.

As valuations climb, the universe of individuals capable of writing the check shrinks. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has openly connected rising valuations with the league's decision to permit institutional investment.

Minority ownership helps solve that problem.

Suppose a family owns a franchise worth $8 billion.

It does not want to sell.

But perhaps it wants $800 million to build an entertainment district, renovate a stadium, diversify family wealth, pay estate obligations or simply take money off the table.

Selling 10% can create liquidity without surrendering control.

Private equity provides a natural buyer because institutional funds can write checks large enough to matter.

Deloitte has described this as one of the enduring attractions of minority sports investments: investors gain exposure to scarce premium assets while existing owners unlock liquidity and growth capital.

Buying part of a sports franchise is not like buying shares of a public company.

The league gets a say.

The precise policies differ, change over time and are not always published in full. But the current major-league frameworks illustrate how controlled institutional ownership remains.

The NFL is the most restrictive of the four.

Its approved policy allows private-equity funds collectively to own only 10% of a franchise; an investment ordinarily must be at least 3%; approved funds may invest in as many as six teams; and the investment is designed to be passive and non-voting. The league also imposed an initial six-year holding period.

The NBA historically permitted funds to hold interests in five teams but increased that number to eight effective December 3, 2025, while retaining the 20% single-fund and 30% aggregate institutional limits.

Public reporting identifies MLB's single-fund limit at 15% and the NHL's at 20%, with both leagues allowing up to 30% institutional ownership in a team.

The message behind these rules is straightforward:

Leagues want institutional capital without turning control of their franchises over to financial institutions.

A simplified minority investment usually looks something like this.

1. The owner decides to create liquidity or raise capital.

The team may want money for a stadium, real estate, debt reduction, expansion of related businesses or personal liquidity.

2. The parties negotiate valuation.

If a fund pays $500 million for 10%, that does not automatically mean everyone has agreed the entire franchise could be sold tomorrow for exactly $5 billion.

Minority stakes can carry discounts or other economic adjustments because they lack control and can be difficult to resell.

3. They negotiate rights.

These may include financial reporting, information access, transfer rights, rights of first refusal, tag-along or drag-along provisions and protections surrounding future financings.

But league rules may sharply restrict governance rights.

4. The league investigates and approves the investment.

Sports leagues routinely scrutinize proposed owners and ownership structures. Approval is part of the asset.

You cannot simply purchase 15% of an NFL franchise from an existing owner and announce yourself as the newest owner on Monday.

5. The investor holds the asset.

Unlike traditional private equity, aggressive operational control may not be available.

Value creation may instead come from franchise appreciation, commercial growth, venue development, media economics and strategic advice.

6. Eventually, the fund needs an exit.

That could mean selling the stake to another approved investor, participating in a sale of the entire franchise, selling through a recapitalization or using another league-approved structure.

That final stage may become the most important test of the entire sports-private-equity experiment.

Buying scarce assets has proved popular.

We are only beginning to see how efficiently institutions can sell them.

The investment thesis is not simply: “This team makes money.”

It is closer to: “This is a scarce piece of intellectual property inside a protected league structure with recurring revenue, devoted customers, valuable live content and a growing universe of potential buyers.”

That is a very different thesis.

A team could generate relatively modest current cash flow compared with its valuation and still become an excellent investment if its franchise value appreciates substantially.

Sports investors therefore pay close attention not only to EBITDA or annual profits but also to media-rights trajectories, league economics, market size, venue control, real estate, sponsorship opportunities, international growth and the prices paid in comparable transactions.

The franchise itself may be only the center of a much larger commercial ecosystem.

Usually not.

Institutional investments in major U.S. leagues are generally designed to be passive and non-controlling. The NFL expressly structured its model that way.

A fund may provide strategic expertise behind the scenes, but that is very different from controlling football or basketball operations.

Not necessarily.

An individual who founded a private-equity firm can own a controlling franchise interest personally or through a separate ownership vehicle.

That is different from a pooled private-equity fund taking an institutional minority position.

Not necessarily.

A non-controlling stake may have different economics because it lacks control, has transfer restrictions and may have limited liquidity.

The percentage is easy.

Valuing what that percentage is actually worth is the hard part.

Sometimes.

The Dolphins transaction included the stadium and Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix. Other sports ownership groups contain media companies, real estate, other franchises or entertainment assets.

Always ask what sits inside the entity being valued.

Not necessarily.

League approval, contractual transfer restrictions and mandatory holding periods can all constrain an exit.

The NFL, for example, requires an initial six-year hold for qualifying fund investments.

That matters because private-equity funds eventually must return capital to their investors.

The biggest risk may be the same thing that makes these assets attractive:

valuation.

Scarcity can justify a premium.

It cannot justify every price.

If investors continue bidding franchise values upward faster than the underlying economics grow, future returns become increasingly dependent on finding someone willing to pay an even higher multiple.

Media also cuts both ways. Long-term national contracts provide stability, but changing distribution models, declining traditional television economics and fragmented local-media markets can create uncertainty.

There is also liquidity risk.

There is no stock exchange where a fund can sell 12% of an NHL franchise tomorrow morning.

The buyer must have the money, accept minority ownership, satisfy the league and negotiate the transaction.

Then there is governance.

Minority investors may disagree with controlling owners over spending, financing, facilities, distributions or a future sale while having limited legal or contractual power to change course.

That is why the boring provisions in an ownership agreement can eventually become extremely important.

Who gets information?

Who can block what?

Who must sell when the controlling owner sells?

How is a future stake valued?

Who gets the first opportunity to buy it?

The glamorous asset still runs on contracts.

For team owners, institutional capital creates another way to raise enormous amounts of money without giving up the franchise.

For private-equity firms, it creates access to assets that historically were almost impossible for institutional investors to own.

For leagues, it broadens the buyer pool at a moment when franchise values have outgrown the checkbooks of all but the wealthiest individuals.

For fans, the immediate impact is often much smaller than the headlines suggest. A passive fund owning 10% of a franchise does not suddenly call the plays.

But over the long term, institutional capital can affect how stadiums are financed, how surrounding entertainment districts are developed, how franchises commercialize their brands and ultimately who can afford to own professional sports.

Three developments matter most.

First, the exits. Private-equity investing ultimately depends on turning paper appreciation into realized returns. As early sports funds begin selling mature investments, the industry will get better evidence about whether headline franchise appreciation translates into attractive fund-level returns. Deloitte has identified this first meaningful wave of exits as an important next stage for sports investing.

Second, league rules. The NFL only opened the door to institutional capital in 2024. The NBA expanded its multi-team investment limit in late 2025. Further liberalization—or new restrictions—is entirely possible.

Third, what counts as the sports asset. Increasingly, the most interesting investments may combine the team with the stadium, real estate, media, data, hospitality and other businesses built around fandom.

The future of sports ownership may therefore be less about buying a team and more about buying an entire entertainment ecosystem.

Not in the major U.S. leagues. Institutional investments are generally minority and non-controlling, although other sports and leagues can permit different structures.

Because control is only one path to investment returns. If an asset is sufficiently scarce and valuable, a passive economic interest can still be attractive—especially when the investor believes the franchise will appreciate.

Liquidity. An owner can convert part of a multibillion-dollar asset into cash while retaining control and participating in future appreciation.

No. They carry valuation, liquidity, media, governance, regulatory and execution risks. Scarcity does not eliminate the possibility of overpaying.

Winning can improve ticket demand, sponsorship opportunities, brand relevance and other commercial metrics.

But the investment thesis is generally much broader than next season's standings.

Private equity wants sports teams for a surprisingly simple reason:

There are very few great sports franchises, and the world keeps producing more money that wants to own them.

The leagues have responded by opening the gates carefully—allowing institutional investors to buy pieces of franchises while largely keeping control in traditional ownership hands.

That has created an unusual bargain.

Existing owners get liquidity without necessarily surrendering their teams.

Private-equity funds get exposure to scarce assets with powerful brands, long-lived fan bases and recurring commercial opportunities.

And leagues get a deeper pool of capital capable of supporting franchise values that now routinely run into the billions.

Private equity usually wants to buy a company and take control.

Sports has become valuable enough that, sometimes, simply getting into the building is the investment.