The NFL is on the verge of allowing private equity into its ownership ranks.
The league has scheduled a special meeting for Aug. 27 in Minneapolis, where owners will likely vote on whether to approve the addition of private capital.
The NFL is the only major U.S. league that does not allow institutional investors. It has spent more than a year monitoring other leagues and their practices. Most insiders expect the world’s richest league to be significantly more conservative than its peers, which would track with its tighter ownership rules in areas like governance and team sales.
The NBA, MLB, MLS and NWSL all allow funds to hold up to 30% of a team’s equity. The NFL has been discussing the 10% range, with some owners pushing for something closer to 5%, sources said.
Most people around the league consider it a foregone conclusion that owners will vote to allow some sort of institutional option. A handful of teams already have term sheets ready to execute should the rules allow, sources said, with others in the market discussing potential stakes with both individual and institutional backers. But the PE committee is acting deliberately as it sorts through its final rules to put to a vote of all 32 owners.
NFL representatives in the room at Thursday’s meeting included Commissioner Roger Goodell, finance executive Joe Siclare, CFO Christine Dorfler, and league lawyers Jeffrey Pash and Jay Bauman.
A special NFL committee, formed last year to examine the league’s ownership rules, tuned in via Zoom. That group includes Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, who is chairman of the NFL’s finance committee, plus Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Denver Broncos owner Greg Penner.
