This x1000. Private equity actually has all kinds of perverse incentives where they make more money by running companies into the ground then turning them around.

Rich people are worth more money than ever before...just a lot of them have no interest in owning a sports team.

Who would be the face of the private equity ownership? Some figurehead? Or would they be under the radar?

Who would like to see Martin Shkreli be the face of an NFL ownership?

This.......is a really bad idea.

How about these people looking to be the actual investors create an honest to goodness NFL minor league set of franchises endorsed by the NFL itself, and not some UFL amalgam put together from the remnants of the XFL and USFL by Dwayne Johnson's fever dreams to rule the entertainment industry? They can still get in on NFL bucks and lifestyles while promoting a league that can honestly be used by the league as an option to groom younger players that might not have made the splash in college that they were capable of?

TL;DR - stop screwing with a product that doesn't need to be screwed with.

But you see there are more golden eggs in that goose. We just have to open her up.

T. Boone Pickens would have bought the Raiders and sold off the offensive line to a highway construction firm in Brazil and the linebacker corps to a rebel movement in the Congo.

You guys are blind and foolish.

Jets
Browns
Lions
Panthers
Redskins
Cardinals
Chargers
Falcons
Dolphins
Raiders
Giants
Titans
Texans
Bears
Packers
Vikings
Bills
Cowboys

Last 25 years or more, what success have they had on the field, drafting or other overall success. More than half the league.

I'm not saying hedge funds will be better but for many franchises, it couldn't hurt.

You guys have picked a villain and it's tainting your thought process.

A billionaire can buy it as a hobby like Paul Allen or Arthur Blank or Ford Family or the Mara family.

Maybe just maybe collective thinking could make some better decisions.

Has every owner played football? Of course not but they run a football team.

Football gets the fans these days no matter what shit they put on the field

Problem with Hedge Funds is, near as I can figure it, they have a fiduciary obligation to maximize profit.

Granted, sometimes these charters will allow some flexibility, but the idea that you're going to write a shitload of checks, underwrite a year or two of losses and push your chips in for a shot at a 'ship doesn't really check out against what those fiduciary obligations tend to be.

This feels like a terrible idea.

And fellas - here's a hint: I don't care what Forbes says - if nobody wants to buy your team, it isn't 'worth' what Forbes says it is.

If there's a shrinking pool of buyers because evals are too high, then maybe the problem is the evals, fellas. Because ownership groups writ large aren't new and they aren't a problem. By and large, they tend to work out fairly well and there's no shortage of very rich people that would like to be even 3-5% owners of an NFL franchise.

UNLESS you've priced that franchise too damn high. And if you have, I'm not sure how a Hedge Fund can actually justify that purchase to its investors.

"The NFL's ownership rules are widely regarded as being the most restrictive in professional sports. They require the lead investor of an ownership group to have at least a 30 percent equity stake in the purchase. No ownership group can exceed 25 people, including the lead investor."

I don't like the idea and for the NFL to play it up as "Teams are too expensive to buy and not enough rich people to buy them"....

Maybe a team comes up for sale every 5 years on average? I think there are plenty of wealth out there to purchase 30% of a team to make it happen.

I think NFL Thursday Night Games are a worse idea than allowing private equity to buy a club.

I also think part time refs are really foolish.

All the money the league gets, refs should be full time, highly trained, full time and taken care of.

Doing the opposite of MLB is almost always a better idea. It's how the NFL got here.

LMAO

Imagine free enterprise in sports.

Horrible idea they can stick up their @ss