Washington Commanders managing companion Josh Harris (L) indicators a Commanders helmet whereas joined by Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (C) and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (R) throughout a information convention on building of a brand new Commanders stadium in Washington, D.C., on April 28, 2025.
Win McNamee | Getty Pictures
Over the past decade, personal fairness investor Josh Harris has constructed one of many largest conglomerates in sports activities.
Harris Blitzer Sports activities & Leisure, which he co-founded with Blackstone govt David Blitzer in 2017, owns majority stakes throughout lots of the most dear sports activities leagues on the earth. That features stakes within the NFL’s Washington Commanders, the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, the NHL’s New Jersey Devils and the Premier League’s Crystal Palace. Earlier this yr, the group paid a $250 million franchise price for a Philadelphia WNBA enlargement workforce, anticipated to start play in 2030.
That has rapidly made HBSE one of the vital invaluable sports activities possession teams on the earth. In truth, it ranked third in CNBC’s 2025 Most Useful Sports activities Empires record at a worth of $14.58 billion.
However these continued rising valuations increase a query that harkens again to Harris’ time as a personal fairness govt: Will HBSE, or different sports activities groups and huge possession conglomerates, begin to look towards going public?
“I do not suppose so,” Harris instructed CNBC’s Scott Wapner at CNBC Sport and Boardroom’s Recreation Plan convention in Santa Monica, California, on Tuesday.
“When you concentrate on IPOs and sports activities property being public to this point, they have been valued extra extremely as personal property,” Harris mentioned. “You have not seen the general public valuations exceed the personal valuations; due to this fact, individuals have tended to maintain them personal.”
Madison Sq. Backyard’s sports activities property, which embody the New York Knicks and Rangers, are among the many solely U.S. sports activities groups to be owned by public firms.
Harris mentioned that in the event you take a look at these situations, “they often commerce under their intrinsic worth, they usually have not been embraced as a lot as we wish.”
One huge consideration has saved most golf equipment off the general public markets, Harris mentioned.
“Folks have tended to maintain them personal as a result of in the end as somebody who’s operating a workforce, you need to have the ability to spend to win,” he mentioned. “You need to have the ability to take a really long-term perspective, and the general public markets have not at all times embraced that.”
Harris notched an enormous win for the Commanders this yr, putting a $3.7 billion deal to relocate the workforce from its present stadium in Landover, Maryland, to Washington, D.C., on the grounds of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium.
“We’re not going to see the income from that for years and years later,” he mentioned.
Most groups, particularly within the NFL, are intergenerational property, and leagues have opened up new methods to lift cash. Final yr the league voted to approve choose personal fairness corporations to take minority stakes in NFL franchises.
Harris mentioned that method has been constructive to this point.
“Lots of the funds are long-date funds, they usually do not have the everyday issues that personal fairness normally has, like management,” he mentioned. “That permits for house owners reminiscent of myself to suppose very long run, … They know over the long term they’re betting on the town, the fan help and the league progress.”
