Listening to Mark Cuban’s daily third grade drama on sports radio, I realized most owners are known in their town, but usually only known by the companies that made them rich, but are not the spotlight seeking captains of industry.
Which kind of surprises me.
Obviously, George Steinbrenner is probably the first name people think of when someone asks them to name a sports owner. He’s famous FOR being a sports owner, but I guess that counts.
I know Gene Autry once owned the California Angels of Los Angeles and Anaheim and Any Other City That Will Watch Us Other Than The Dodgers.
We could probably include Wrigley, but I know him more for the gum and the field than for his own personality. I don’t even know his first name.
But short of that, no public figures with great fame or oversized personalities come to mind.
Paul Allen is significant, but everyone knows Bill Gates instead. Naturally you have to have done SOMETHING to be rich enough to own a team, but mostly, the owners of sports teams seem to be kind of reserved (which is why Cuban stands out).
Any other celebrities own majority interest in a team in the history of the big three American Sports leagues? I mean people that everyone would know whether they followed sports or business.
Pat Boone was the owner of the Oakland Oaks of the ABA.
John Candy was a co-owner of the Toronto Argonauts of the CFL.
Tom Clancy is a co-owner of the Baltimore Orioles of MLB.
Bill Murray had been co-owner of a number of minor-league baseball teams: the St. Paul Saints, the Charleston RiverDogs, the Hudson Valley Renegades, the Brockton Rox, the Utica Blue Sox, the Fort Myers Miracle, the Salt Lake Trappers, and the Auburn Astros.
Jay-Z is co-owner of the New Jersey-unless-we-can-escape-to-Brooklyn Nets. And Russell Crowe owns part of a rugby team. There are a handful of other actors who’ve done the same, think. Just not very many who’ve done it with major league U.S. sports teams because that tends to require amounts of money that an actor or producer might not have.
There are plenty of celebrities who’ve bought minor partnerships in franchises, but were never In Charge. Bob Hope and Danny Kaye had shares of the Seattle Mariners, for instance.
Steinbrenner, Cuban, Marge Schott, and this Doyle guy with the Knicks became celebrities by way of media-pimping themselves as team owners - they weren’t famous outside of those roles, which is what I think you’re after.
He wasn’t really famous until AFTER his ownership had ended. His name was famous, but that also applies to Ross Perot Jr, who owned the Dallas Mavericks before Cuban. Funny, two of the three 1992 presidential candidates owned a Dallas sports team at the same time. Is there any chance Bill Clinton traveled back in time and fathered Jerry Jones? Then we would have a trifecta. I see some resemblence.
This is it, in a nutshell.
Though I did think of a HUGE addition to the list. Ted Turner. He started CNN, married Jane Fonda, and ran his mouth like nobody’s business.
In addition to Bob Hope owning part of the Indians. (I never heard of him owning part of the Mariners, either.) For about 20 years or so Bing Crosby was part owner of the Pirates.
Michael Jordan is part owner of the Charlotte Bobcats
Cuban was famous before he bought the Mavs – at least in the technology world.
You could say the same about Tom Golisano and Wayne Huizenga, I think, whose business success (and political career, in Golisano’s case) made them well known before they bought sports teams. Golisano owns the Buffalo Sabres, Huizenga owns the Miami Dolphins.
Ted Turner was on the cover of Sports Illustrated (as a yachtsman) before he bought the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks.
Ray Kroc was well known as the founder of McDonalds before he bought the San Diego Padres
Singer Danny Thomas was the original owner of the Miami Dolphins. He was essentially the figurehead for the ownership group, and sold out shortly after the team was founded.
Baron Hilton, hotel magante (and grandfather of Paris and Nicole) was the original owner of the Chargers.