For Josh Harris, buying the Washington NFL franchise last year fulfilled a childhood dream. It also established a new record for the highest sum ever paid for a sports franchise: $6.05 billion.
Harris, a cofounder of Apollo Global Management, joked Friday at FII Priority Miami Summit about whether such a splashy purchase would sully his credentials as a respected value investor. “I don’t really think so,” he said.
In fact, years from now, he continued, the Commanders purchase will look like a “bargain buy of a dominant, top-three, top-five franchise.” What he and his ownership group—a cadre that includes Magic Johnson, David Blitzer, and billionaire Mitchell Rales—paid will “look like a great price,” with the $6.05 billion figure translating to 60 times Ebitda.
Harris, who left Apollo Global in 2021, is an experienced sports investor. He and Blitzer, the global head of tactical opportunities group at Blackstone, founded Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which owns the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and NHL’s New Jersey Devils. Harris is also a general partner of the Premier League side Crystal Palace.
Soaring valuations have spurred alternative investors, including private equity executives, to scoop up sports franchises, Fortune has reported. David Rubenstein, a Carlyle Group co-founder, recently led a group to buy the Baltimore Orioles for $1.7 billion. Rubenstein said on Friday that he watched as his friends who bought basketball teams were “doubling and tripling their money.”
Harris noted how there are “lots of tailwinds in sports, and that’s why you’re seeing these multiples change from traditional multiples to more growth multiples. And I think that’s here to stay.”
But that doesn’t mean nostalgia is dead. Harris grew up near Washington, D.C., in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and fondly recalls going to RFK stadium as an 8-year-old to watch his favorite team, then called the Redskins.
“Some of my earliest memories were, you know, Washington football, walking into RFK, the three Super Bowl championships,” he said. “Everyone talks about Dallas as if it was America’s team for years and years. Washington was America’s team.”
The franchise, he continued, was “number one in revenues. And I understood that power.”
Not unlike Jim Ratcliffe, the petrochemical billionaire who bought 25% of Manchester United last year for about $1.6 billion in a deal valuing the legendary English soccer club at well over $6 billion. Turns out the Commanders’ record deal didn’t even last until the end of 2023.
“Thankfully,” Harris joked on Friday, “we’re in the number two slide right now.”
