In comments on the rising value of sports teams, the head of Joe Tsai’s family investment office said the Brooklyn Nets owner plans other sports investments beyond what he’s made with the Nets, Barclays Center, New York Liberty and in pro lacrosse.
Oliver Weisberg, head of Blue Pool Capital, told an investment symposium in Hong Kong recently that Blue Pool is particularly interested in women’s sports, according to Asian Investor.
“When I think about about my marginal dollar today,” AI quoted Weisberg, who’s also an alternate governor of the Nets, as saying, “Sports is at the top of the list. Sports has become an actual asset class now.
“We believe that the rising interest in live sports, and the increasing growth in media rights, that’s something we’re super excited about. It’s not just the NFL, the NBA, the NHL. It’s women’s soccer, women’s basketball.”
The Tsais’ investment in the Brooklyn Nets has indeed soared since they bought in to the team in August 2018, then gained full control in October 2019. Recent reports suggest that Blue Pool Capital is interested in selling up to 15% of the BSE Global, the parent company of Nets, Liberty and Barclays Center, to Julia Koch, the widow of conservative financier David Koch, at a valuation of $4.8 billion. That’s a billion dollars more than what the Tsais paid.
The increasing popularity of the WNBA and women’s basketball in general has also made the Tsais’ investment in the Liberty a big winner. The Liberty were playing in an 90-year-old auditorium in White Plains when the Tsais bought the team from James Dolan in January 2019, reportedly for the assumption of debt and the promise of profit sharing. The Liberty is probably worth more than $200 million today.
In addition to his New York-based sports assets, his J Tsai Sports, part of Blue Pool, owns two franchises in the Premier Lacrosse League, the San Diego Seals and Las Vegas Desert Dogs and a piece of the National Lacrosse League. He also has a minority interest in F.C. Los Angeles of MLS along with sports media and technology companies in North America and Asia.
Blue Pool has also invested in a variety of assets beyond sports including New York real estate, a hotel chain in Spain and Portugal and most recently, a stake in Alibaba, the e-commerce company that Joe Tsai heads as executive chairman. Weisberg also told the symposium that the Tsais are also investing in Japanese real estate.
In an interview with the head of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund earlier this month, Joe Tsai described owning the Nets “absolutely fun” and just Wednesday, Sean Marks told a group of Nets fans that “our ownership, Joe, has never wavered from putting all resources behind the team. To me, that makes me feel really good.”
