Technology and sports seem to collide more and more each day–instant replay, stadium experience, and performance have all been impacted. But technology may be impacting sports in a subtle way as well: through the men and women handing out the paychecks.
In the wake of Donald Sterling’s downfall, Steve Ballmer has made a bid to purchase the Los Angeles Clippers. This sale will put Ballmer, former Microsoft Chief Executive Officer, within a growing crowd: techies who have found a second life in major sports.
There are 32 NFL teams and 30 in the MLB, NBA, and the NHL. Yet, according to Quartz, only 12 of the combined 90 team owners made their fortunes in techonology. Still, these numbers show promise, considering that tech barely had a presence in sports before 1990.
Mark Cuban stands out as one of the best known members of this exclusive club. The Dallas Mavericks’ owner can be recognized for open criticisms of the NBA officials, not to mention his appearances on ABC’s Shark Tank.
But this is the postscript. Cuban’s Mavericks ownership would not have been possible without money, and that in turn would not have become reality without the dot-com boom of the 1990s. Cuban and partner Todd Wagner sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo! for $5.7 billion, according to CNNMoney, in 1999. Broadcast.com, a glorified audio-video player, was actually losing money when Yahoo! bought it. But Yahoo! decided the multimedia platform would be important for its own growth. And a year later, Cuban purchased the Mavs.
Another NBA mogul, Paul Allen, owns the Portland Trail Blazers… AND the Seattle Seahawks (an NFL team). Allen, like Ballmer, made his money with Microsoft. He left school at Washington State to Co-Found the company with Bill Gates. Allen left shortly after due to health issues, but has since made money through several ventures, perhaps most notably sports. In 1997, Allen bought the Seahawks for $194 million and put in an extra $130 million for a new stadium. Today, Seattle’s NFL team is worth $1 billion. Allen’s Trail Blazers have also multiplied in value, eight times over since his 1988 purchase.
Ten years ago, tech moguls barely populated Forbes’ top-50 billionaires list. But today, they constitute nearly 10 percent of that group. Plus, all eight are American. This potentially increases interest in buying American sports franchises; although others, like Brooklyn Nets’ Owner, Mikhail Prokhorov, have recently made such purchases.
The dot-com boom may have passed, but now some of these billionaires are looking for things to buy. The Clippers transaction certainly comes as a result of extraordinary circumstances. However, Ballmer’s $2 billion bid represents his power amongst other wealthy investors. Clearly, that power increasingly lies with tech.