Cover Story Why most New Team Owners Struggle to Win Titles A NEW GENERATION OF PRO SPORTS-TEAM OWNERS IS FINDING OUT YOU CAN’T ALWAYS BUY CHAMPIONSHIPS. ONLY A FEW months into the new National Basketball Association (NBA) season, but it doesn’t take a genius fan to know that one team will be playing for the league championship in June: the Golden State Warriors. After all, the team has made it to the last three NBA championships, winning two of them and setting a record for most wins in a season. They’re such a sure bet that Vegas oddsmakers have placed a negative money line on the Warriors winning it all—bettors picking them have to put up more money than they would win. 27 By Peter Lauria inning and the Warriors weren’t always synonymous. Before 2013, the franchise only made the playoffs six times since 1980, and lost in the early rounds each time. But new ownership this decade—led by venture capitalist Joe Lacob and Wmovie producer Peter Guber—has managed to turn the team not only into a perennial powerhouse, but also a well-known global brand. Based in Silicon Valley, and armed with poster star Stephen Curry, this is the team whose success is often associated with the rise of neighboring tech giants like Apple The Problem and Google. Feel like going to a game? Not a chance—the New sports owners Warriors have sold out more than 230 consecutive games. are spending This kind of success, of course, is rare in any professional millions buying sport. But it turns out, it has become so rare that few can teams to win titles. seem to replicate it—or know how. The major professional And surprisingly sports leagues have worked hard in recent years to create few even get close. “parity.” They balanced divisions, changed schedules, increased opportunities for players to switch teams. And yet Why Worry? the data paints a dismal picture of how badly new owners The reasons may who spend billions of dollars trying to win championships differ, but business are doing. leaders are facing Over the last 10 years, there have been 36 new sports- similar issues trying team owners—roughly 30 percent of all franchises across to “win” in today’s the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball global economy. (MLB), the National Hockey League (NHL) and the NBA. Of those, only the Warriors and the 2016 Chicago Cubs have The Solution won a championship. (As of press time, baseball’s World A handful of teams Series was about to produce a third.) Forget championships, have discovered that though—most new owners rarely have a winning record alignment through or reach the playoffs. Steve Ross, the billionaire real estate an entire operation developer, bought the NFL’s Miami Dolphins for $1.1 billion can be a game in 2008, only to watch the team post a losing or .500 record changer. in all but one season through last year. Similarly, baseball’s San Diego Padres have been a below .500 team in all five seasons since an investor group bought it for $800 million in 2012. The Dallas Stars of the NHL have made the playoffs in two of the six seasons under owner Tom Gaglardi, a Canadian business executive, but his $240 million purchase-price investment has reached no farther than the second round. A Korn Ferry analysis of the championship competitors across the five major pro- fessional sports in the US over the last decade shows that fewer than half of all teams 28 —ARTHUR BLANK Owner, Atlanta Falcons in every sport except soccer ever get the chance to play for a title. In the NBA, only 30 percent, or nine of the 30 teams, have made it to the championship round, while pro baseball and hockey aren’t much better, with 43 percent having been to the final dance. And in the NFL—which has gone through painstaking schedule shuffling and other parity efforts—only 13 of 32 teams have played for a title since 2007. “Turning a losing franchise into a championship team is like trying to turn around a bankrupt company,” says Jed Hughes, Korn Ferry’s vice chairman and global sector leader of sports. “You have to get the culture, strategy and leadership exactly right to make it a place where talent wants to go. But that is extremely hard to do in a supercompetitive, constantly changing landscape.” For their part, owners and other observers say the difficulties of reaching the pinnacle of their business—which would frustrate virtually any CEO or entrepreneur—are a sign of the times, with free agency and rising player salaries reducing the odds of winning every year. Certainly, with multimillion-dollar TV contracts, the pressure to build new stadiums, and an entirely new world of digital technology affecting sports and sports viewing, running a sports franchise has never been harder. And with the leagues doing little to nothing to onboard new owners, the playbook for ever winning a title becomes more elusive for all but a few. Just ask Arthur Blank, whose Atlanta Falcons were edged by the New England Patriots in last year’s Super Bowl. “The days of operating one of these franchises as a hobby are long over,” he says. “They are very complex today, and they are growing tremendously on the business and marketing side.” That complexity and the costs of running a sports franchise today are directly responsible for the seismic changes in the nature of ownership taking place. Sports franchise ownership used to be a family affair, with teams passed down from one generation to the next. Or owners were superfans who wanted to live out their boyhood dreams vicariously from a luxury suite. (Ownership was, and still is, male-dominated.) Briefly, media conglomerates News Corp. and Time Warner jumped onto the field, believing that combining team ownership with television distribution assets would add synergistic value to both—but they eventually ditched the business. Today, a new breed has stepped in. The rise of the global billionaire class, coupled with the soaring worth of sports franchises, make owning a team a great investment for the buyer and a lucrative exit for many of the families that own teams. This new generation of owners—comprised of leaders such as former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, entrepreneur Mark Cuban and investment banker Tom Ricketts, among others—made their names and fortunes in technology, finance, real estate and elsewhere. “Asset values are going up across the board,” says Sal Galatioto, whose firm Galatioto Sports Partners advised on the sales of both the Warriors and the Cubs, among others. “Sports is the most valuable media content, and digital technology is allowing franchises and leagues to maximize how it is distributed because they own the rights.” 31 Buying ... But Winning? The selling of sports franchises continues to be hot, but new team owners struggle to win any titles. Here are the numbers: NFL NBA MLB NHL Average Franchise Sale Price $ $ $ $ 1 billion 702.6 million 883.8 million 251.5 million Number of Franchises Sold 5 12 6 13 Percentage of League Franchises Sold 14% 33% 17% 36% Percentage of Teams with Appearance in League Finals 40% 30% 43% 43% Source: Korn Ferry for the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League Our What really works off the field to win on it? Playbook Former coach and longtime sports expert Jed Hughes, vice chairman and head of Korn GETTING Ferry’s Global Sports practice, interviewed more than a dozen sports owners across four TO THE TOP leagues and found four key steps: 1 2 3 4 Pick up Consistency Invest Connect with the phone. is key. beyond players. the community. Professional sports-team Owners that determine Focus on building out the Technically, the owner owners are part of an elite, their roles early on and set business side of the fran- “owns” the team. But, as exclusive club; there are the strategies and values chise to provide the fan base Dallas Mavericks owner only 122 in the US. Find that form their culture often and resources necessary to Mark Cuban notes, it really fellow owners and peers succeed—if they stick to support the sports side and belongs to the community. that you can trust to be them. Inconsistency off the enhance the experience Recognize the importance of confidantes. field is often worse than it is beyond the game. community involvement to on the field. the team’s overall success. —JED HUGHES Vice Chairman and Global Sector Leader of Sports, Korn Ferry Media rights are just one avenue new sports-team owners can mine for growth. International expansion, so-called e-sports, hospitality, fantasy sports, gam- bling, branding, licensing, stadium and sponsorship partnerships, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and a host of other emerging technologies all present signifi- cant additional revenue streams. According to one report, combined pro-sports revenue will reach nearly $73.5 billion by 2019, up from $60.5 billion in 2014, an annual growth rate of 4.8 percent. In conjunction with the growth in revenue has been a sharp increase in team valuations. According to Forbes, the top 50 pro- sports teams globally were worth an average of $2.2 billion each, a more than 25 percent increase in valuation from the $1.75 billion average a year prior. Small wonder then that since 2000, the top eight US team sales were at prices in excess of $1 billion, and three of them have been for above $2 billion—including the sale of the NBA’s Houston Rockets for $2.2 billion in September, the highest price ever paid for a sports franchise.