Latest news with #sportsownership
CNA
27-05-2025
- Business
- CNA
Sailing-From red carpet to Red Bull, Anne Hathaway boards high-speed league
Oscar winner Anne Hathaway has sailed into sports ownership, joining a female-led consortium that has acquired the Red Bull Italy SailGP Team in a landmark deal bringing Hollywood star power to the high-octane racing championship. Sailing great Jimmy Spithill has been installed as team CEO and co-owner, with investors from entertainment, luxury goods and finance in what SailGP CEO Russell Coutts called "another significant milestone in SailGP's growth as a league", SailGP is the international sailing league featuring high-performance F50 foiling catamarans, with national teams competing in short-format races at coastal venues around the world. Founded in 2018, the series aims to revolutionise sailing with fast-paced, made-for-broadcast events and cutting-edge data analytics. The current SailGP season features 12 teams competing. The next event on the calendar is the Mubadala New York Sail Grand Prix, scheduled for June 7-8.
Reuters
27-05-2025
- Business
- Reuters
From red carpet to Red Bull, Anne Hathaway boards high-speed league
May 27 (Reuters) - Oscar winner Anne Hathaway has sailed into sports ownership, joining a female-led consortium that has acquired the Red Bull Italy SailGP Team in a landmark deal bringing Hollywood star power to the high-octane racing championship. Sailing great Jimmy Spithill has been installed as team CEO and co-owner, with investors from entertainment, luxury goods and finance in what SailGP CEO Russell Coutts called "another significant milestone in SailGP's growth as a league", SailGP is the international sailing league featuring high-performance F50 foiling catamarans, with national teams competing in short-format races at coastal venues around the world. Founded in 2018, the series aims to revolutionise sailing with fast-paced, made-for-broadcast events and cutting-edge data analytics. The current SailGP season features 12 teams competing. The next event on the calendar is the Mubadala New York Sail Grand Prix, scheduled for June 7-8.
New York Times
26-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
House Bill Takes Aim at Tax Break for Sports Owners
Tucked in the domestic policy bill advanced by House Republicans last week is a change to the tax code that could potentially cool the current frenzy among the very wealthy to own professional sports teams. For decades, owners of teams in the N.F.L., N.B.A. and other major leagues have been able to write off the entire value of their team's 'intangible assets,' which include player contracts, media rights and sponsorships, over 15 years. Under the House plan, team owners would be able to deduct from their taxes only half the value of those intangible assets over that period. The tax break, introduced two decades ago, can amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. Intangible assets make up the bulk of a team's worth, and because team values have been steadily rising, the tax breaks have as well. The tax break has turned teams into a kind of tax shelter and has helped fuel the lofty prices that investment firms and billionaires have paid for teams in recent years. While the provision in the House bill would not affect current owners, only future ones, it threatens to have a chilling effect across sports ownership. If demand for teams cools, current owners could be hurt because the value of their investments might not grow as quickly. The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that cutting the write-offs in half would raise $991 million in revenue over 10 years. Team owners insist the number is far higher, though almost all teams are privately held and do not disclose their financials. Leagues have been doing the math to determine how much the tax bill might hurt them. The prospect of the tax changes could spur sellers — or buyers — to move more quickly ahead of any changes being formalized, said Mark Weinstein, a partner at the law firm Hogan Lovells. N.F.L. owners, who met for two days in Eagan, Minn., last week, were briefed on the provision. According to team executives, the owners were encouraged to call senators in their home states to pressure them not to include a similar provision in the Senate version of the policy bill. One team president, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared potential fallout from the president, said that the provision 'felt punitive.' President Trump, he and others said, wants leverage over the owners. The White House disputed that suggestion. A White House spokesman, Harrison Fields, said the tax measure was about eliminating an advantage for owners at a time when the price of attending sporting events is rising. 'The president is committed to ensuring that sports teams overcharging ticketholders do not receive favorable tax treatment,' Mr. Fields said in a statement. 'His focus is on fairness for fans, not team ownership.' It's unclear whether the provision was aimed at the N.F.L., which Mr. Trump has sparred with over many years, since it affects all major leagues. That could be by design, Mr. Weinstein said. 'If it was just the N.F.L., then it leads to the conclusion it is punitive, right? If it's all sports leagues, maybe there's some wiggle room,' Mr. Weinstein said. 'It's classic Trump, if you think about it, in that he might intend it to be punitive, but he presents it in a way — maybe it is, maybe it is not.' In recent years, Mr. Trump has battled over a number of issues with teams and athletes, including the N.B.A. stars LeBron James and Stephen Curry. But his relationship with the N.F.L. dates back to the 1980s when he began showing an interest in buying a team. Unable to land a franchise, he bought the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League in 1984 and led an effort to sue the N.F.L. for trying to prevent the U.S.F.L., a spring league, from playing in the fall. The U.S.F.L. won, but was awarded three dollars in damages. The league soon folded. Over the years, Mr. Trump has chided the N.F.L. He played down the severity of concussions and in 2017, he urged owners to fire players who did not stand for the national anthem to protest racial injustice and police brutality. But Mr. Trump remains friendly with several owners, including Woody Johnson of the Jets and Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys. In March, the Patriots owner Robert Kraft reached out to the president to broker a deal with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a law firm that represents the N.F.L. This year, the New Orleans Saints owner Gayle Benson invited Mr. Trump to the Super Bowl, and the title-winning Philadelphia Eagles visited the White House. Two weeks ago, Commissioner Roger Goodell and the Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris went to the Oval Office to announce that the N.F.L. draft would take place in Washington in 2027. Ultimately, Mr. Weinstein said that the allure of teams is so strong that wealthy investors would continue to buy teams, regardless of tax incentives. 'If you're a buyer and you've got that much wealth that you want to join the club, you're going to pay the price,'' he said.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Costly Loss for Sports Team Owners Embedded in Trump Tax Bill
(Bloomberg) -- The owner's box could soon be less opulent. As Coastline Erodes, One California City Considers 'Retreat Now' How a Highway Became San Francisco's Newest Park Maryland's Credit Rating Gets Downgraded as Governor Blames Trump NJ Transit Train Engineers Strike, Disrupting Travel to NYC Power-Hungry Data Centers Are Warming Homes in the Nordics A lucrative tax break that sports team owners can use to shelter billions of dollars of income would be halved in value under House Republicans' draft legislation to enact Donald Trump's signature tax plan. The tax break came under fire after a 2021 ProPublica investigation based on leaked returns showed the shelter helped billionaire team owners pay lower effective tax rates than their players or even concession stand workers. Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, a former Microsoft Corp. chief executive officer, used paper losses from his stake in the team to save about $140 million on his taxes over five years, ProPublica found. The bill itself is the subject of heated negotiations going into the weekend, after the House Budget Committee on Friday failed to advance the legislation over hard-line conservatives' cost concerns. The boon for franchise owners has its origins in sweeping tax legislation passed in 2004 under President George W. Bush, a former part-owner of the Texas Rangers major league baseball team. Trump has a tortured history with sports team ownership that includes failed attempts to acquire the Buffalo Bills and then-Baltimore Colts football teams. He owned a team in the defunct USFL and played a key role in the league's battle with the National Football League. His administration set its sights on the sports team break and initially pushed to end it entirely, said Mark Weinstein, a tax-focused partner at Hogan Lovells. Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee took a middle course, approving a tax bill on Wednesday that would instead cut the value of the break by 50%. The reduction would only apply to owners who purchase teams after the law takes effect, though the change could affect teams' resale values. One fan of curtailing the break is Steve Ellis, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. 'The Commanders sold for $6 billion,' he said, referring the the 2023 sale of the NFL's Washington Commanders to a group led by Apollo Global Management co-founder Josh Harris, who also owns the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team. 'They don't need any help.' Some sports accountants and lobbyists greeted the scaled-back House GOP provision with a 'bit of a sigh of relief' given the White House's efforts to eliminate it completely, Weinstein said. Owners also dodged other risks such as curbing tax-exempt bonds to finance stadium build-outs, he said. But one lawyer involved in sports issues before Congress — speaking on condition of anonymity — said clients were calling this week concerned about the change and anticipated a fierce lobbying campaign to strip out the provision when the Senate considers the tax bill. The tax shelter allows owners active in operating the sports franchises to reduce their taxable income depreciation-like write-offs of 'intangible assets,' not just aging physical ones. Those include so-called 'goodwill' aspects like a team's reputation, strong brand recognition such as a logo and other intellectual rights, radio and television rights, and fan loyalty and following, which also contribute to the value of a team. The reasoning is that a well-known sports team with a loyal fan base is worth far more than the mere value of its physical net assets such as buildings and equipment. In fact, these other, intangible aspects, often represent the largest portion of a team's purchase value. 'Essentially, whatever you pay for the Dallas Cowboys — I'm just making the team up — the trade name would be a significant part of that, because it's a high-value asset,' Lynn Mucenski-Keck, Lead of Federal Tax Policy at Withum, explained. As a result, owners are permitted to amortize costs assigned to those items over a 15-year period — even if most of those assets do not actually depreciate like physical buildings and other property — to cut as much as billions of dollars from their taxable income. The ability to do that — even if the franchise has been profitable — has been one of the main tax shelter-draws to owning sports teams for wealthy people or billionaires. They, like private equity firms, are increasingly being involved in sports franchise ownership, seeking investment opportunities, and returns. Weinstein, whose firm was hired this week to assist with the sale of the Portland Trail Blazers National Basketball Association team, said he expects the potential tax law change to have only a limited impact on professional sports team valuations. 'It could be a disincentive to buy,' offered Helen 'Nellie' Drew, a University of Buffalo law school professor specializing in sports who was on a legal team that handled National Hockey League transactions involving several teams, including the San Jose Sharks and the Tampa Bay Lightning. 'But there will always be something to be said about being part of an exclusive country club of, say, 32 NFL owners — even if certain tax breaks are no longer there,' Drew said. 'There will always be people wanting to buy.' 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Geek Wire
14-05-2025
- Business
- Geek Wire
Who will buy the Blazers? Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's estate plans to sell NBA franchise
Fans pack the Moda Center in Portland during a Trail Blazers home game. The NBA franchise, owned by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen since 1988, is now officially up for sale as part of the winding down of Allen's estate. (GeekWire File Photo / Taylor Soper) The estate of late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen announced Tuesday morning that it has begun the process of selling the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers, which would be a major milestone in fulfilling Allen's directive to sell his sports holdings and direct the proceeds to philanthropy. Allen's estate said the announcement does not impact its ownership of the Seattle Seahawks NFL franchise, or its 25% stake in the Seattle Sounders MLS team, which are not for sale. Who will buy the franchise? The news will no doubt spark months of speculation — and plenty of tech leaders with Seattle or Pacific Northwest ties could be in the mix. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has shown no interest in buying sports teams, at least not publicly, and he has his hands full with winding down the Gates Foundation over the next two decades. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was reported in the past to be a possible buyer of NFL teams including the Seahawks and the Washington Commanders, but he hasn't shown any obvious interest in basketball. A group that included Nike co-founder Phil Knight, based in Oregon, made a $2 billion bid for the Trail Blazers in 2022, a move that could resurface now that the team is officially on the market. The sale is part of the long process of divesting many of the assets and investments that Allen made during his lifetime. Allen died in 2018, at the age of 65, after he was diagnosed with a recurrence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The Trail Blazers sale process is expected to continue into the 2025–26 NBA season, according to the announcement. The estate has retained investment bank Allen & Company and law firm Hogan Lovells to oversee the sale. The NBA Board of Governors would need to ratify any final purchase agreement. RELATED: Remembering Microsoft's other co-founder: How Paul Allen's vision sparked a software revolution
