Exclusive | Billionaires let you inside the owners box to reveal what its really like owning a pro sports team
In 2023, David Rubenstein, a cofounder of the private equity giant Carlyle Group with an estimated net worth of $4.3 billion, was negotiating to buy the Baltimore Orioles when a Zoom call turned insulting.Lawyers and investment bankers representing the buyers and the team’s owners were discussing the deal.Someone questioned whether Rubenstein, now 77, and his prospective partner, investment executive Mike Arougheti, 53, understood debt — though they’d spent their careers in finance.“I announced to everyone that I had heard enough, I was dropping out of the deal and getting off the Zoom, and disconnected,” Rubenstein writes in “Inside the Owner’s Box: Conversations on Power and Leadership in Sports” (Simon & Schuster), out September 22.
“That occurred in the space of about ten seconds.”The blowup nearly ended his pursuit of his hometown team.“I began to think that maybe I had no business buying the team in the first place,” he writes.
About two weeks later, he revived negotiations, eventually completing a $1.7 billion purchase in 2024.Buying the team gave Rubenstein plenty of opportunities to have his judgment questioned again.His book, which includes interviews with fourteen other owners, reveals what comes with owning a major professional sports franchise: fans heckling you in the grocery store, trades you’re still defending years later and colleagues telling you just how stupid your latest decision was.Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai, 62, knows how quickly an expensive trade can turn an owner into a target.
The Alibaba cofounder, worth an estimated $12.1 billion, still takes heat from fans for the January 2021 trade that brought James Harden to Brooklyn alongside Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.Durant and Irving had arrived in 2019, before Tsai became controlling owner.Harden was his gamble, acquired at the cost of players and valuable draft assets.
The trio never delivered a championship.“The Harden decision was definitely on my...