What would you do if you had an extra day each week? Hedge fund titan and billionaire New York Mets owner Steve Cohen is betting that if you’re part of a certain income bracket, you’ll be on the putting green.
Cohen believes a four-day workweek is imminent, he told Andrew Ross Sorkin on Wednesday during a CNBC Squawk Box appearance, and as a result, he’s making large investments in golf.
In envisioning a free Friday, leisure activities (namely golf) have become a prime focus. If people end up having more time to themselves, “anything around…leisure, travel, experiences” would all make for strong investment areas, Cohen said.
During the pandemic, Cohen purchased 95% ownership of the New York Mets for $2.4 billion, which is the largest-ever sale in Major League Baseball. Now he’s deepening his well. Last September he acquired the rights to a New York–based team in TGL, a high-tech golf league founded by Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods. And in January of this year, Cohen—with a group of fellow billionaire sports team owners—invested a reported $3 billion into the PGA Tour.
Even if rapid AI proliferation weren’t leading to what he believes will be the end of the four-day in-office workweek, “I think I would have done the golf investment anyway, because I think there’s a longer-term thought,” Cohen said. Even so, Cohen’s golf investments, he told Sorkin, “should fit into a theme of more leisure.” More leisure means more golf rounds, he added: “I guess courses will be crowded on Fridays.”
This Fridays-off future may be closer than it seems. Friday is consistently the emptiest day at most offices, by far, even now. Steven Roth, the billionaire chairman of commercial landlord Vornado, said last year that Fridays are “dead forever” and Mondays might soon follow. Some forward-thinking companies have already banned meetings and deadlines after close of business Thursday, after which productivity drops off generally.
Not at Point72, if Cohen can help it. If his fund managers start taking off Fridays even when the market is open, “that’s a problem,” Cohen said. On this point, Cohen’s with other finance bigwigs who usually oppose any diversion from the workplace norm.
But the vast majority of those not on Wall Street “will get an opportunity, I think, at some point, to have a three-game weekend,” Cohen predicted. Time to practice your swing.