Forget typical old-money investments like art auctions and classic cars. Today’s billionaires are pouring their cash into their favourite sports teams as an alternative—and turning them into critical funding performs.
Compared to the standard luxurious investments we noticed traditionally, sports possession has shifted from a life interest to a brand new enterprise technique for the world’s largest earners, in keeping with a brand new survey from JPMorgan Private Bank.
In truth, pouring earnings into teams and arenas is the top specialty asset for these ultra-wealthy households. The financial institution mentioned 34% of principals spend money on teams and arenas, in contrast with 23% for art and 10% for cars.
The report was a part of JPMorgan’s 23 Wall division, which advises the wealthiest 0.01%. It surveyed 111 billionaire family-office principals controlling greater than $500 billion in property, and the share of these holding controlling stakes in sports teams has leaped to twenty%, up from simply 6% in 2022.
Billionaires like Mark Walter have been cashing in in offers valued round $10 billion
Billionaire Guggenheim Partners CEO Mark Walter exemplifies this newest funding development. Following approval from the National Basketball Association, he acquired a majority stake within the Los Angeles Lakers in a deal valued at roughly $10 billion.
Walter additionally owns the L.A. Dodgers. His net worth is valued round $7.3 billion.
Other billionaires like Mark Cuban have seen massive returns on their teams, too. In 2000, Cuban purchased the Dallas Mavericks for about $285 million and later bought his majority stake in late 2023 for roughly $3.5 billion.
Professional sports leagues are increasing personal fairness, with alternative in girls’s sports
When it involves billionaires and sports, the river flows each methods. Major sports associations just like the NBA and NFL have additionally expanded their footprint in personal fairness.
Nearly two-thirds of NBA teams coming into the present 2025-26 season have at the least some connection to private-equity cash, a report found. That shift alerts each rising valuations and institutional traders’ rising sway in skilled sports.
“This is a business pleasure, and something we really want to do,” one principal wrote within the report. “We are making a lot of money over time.”
“Twenty years from now, people will not believe that you could acquire a women’s team for $100 million,” one other mentioned.
Interest in girls’s sports is rising. A separate research by McKinsey & Company discovered girls’s sports might generate at the least $2.5 billion in worth for rights holders within the U.S. by 2030, a 250% enhance from the $1 billion generated in 2024.