$3 Billion in Cash: The Rules That Decide Who Can Buy a Sports Franchise

Published on August 21st, 2026
Written By: Dave Manuel

Bob Iger and Josh Kushner agreed a deal this month to take control of the Los Angeles Lakers at a valuation of $12.5 billion, a little over a year after Mark Walter had bought the same franchise at ten. Nobody writes a cheque for either number. There are fewer than two hundred Americans worth more than the average NFL club, a dozen of them already own one, and the leagues have spent a decade writing rules specifically designed to stop a buyer borrowing his way past that problem. So a modern franchise purchase is not a payment. It is a structure - four or five layers of money stacked on top of each other, each with a different price, a different set of rights and a different degree of patience, assembled under a ceiling that keeps having to be raised. This file takes one apart, layer by layer, and looks at what the people building them do when the ceiling gets in the way.

Sports-King Feature

The Debt Behind the Deal

Thirty per cent down in cash. A borrowing limit raised seven times in a decade. Two dozen partners at $358 million each. How a $12.5 billion sports team actually gets paid for - and the instrument that was invented to get around the rules.

By Sports-King

Cash the Owner Must Fund30%

New-Buyer Debt Ceiling$1.4B

Private Equity Cap, NFL10%

Average Partner Cheque$358M

Every entry below is drawn as a stack, because that is genuinely how these deals are built and how the people building them describe them. The layers run in order of who gets paid first: debt at the top, then any preferred capital, then the limited partners, then the control owner at the bottom carrying the most risk and every decision. Where a layer is drawn deep it is a large share of the money. Where it is drawn thin it is small, or capped, or - in one case - technically not there at all.

The ProblemTwelve and a half billion dollars, and nobody has it

Senior debt, at the cap$1.40B

Institutional money, capped at 10%$1.25B

Limited partners, up to 24 of them$6.10B

Control owner, in cash, minimum 30%$3.75B

PRICE ........ $12,500,000,000
CASH REQUIRED $3,750,000,000
DEBT CEILING . ABOUT $1,400,000,000
PARTNERS ..... 24 MAXIMUM
CONSENT ...... 24 OF 32 OWNERSIllustrative, on NFL rules applied to a $12.5 billion price. Every layer has a different price and a different set of rights.

Every franchise purchase is a stack of money. The layers sit in a fixed order, they cost different amounts, and they carry entirely different rights - and the whole structure exists because of a single awkward fact: the assets now cost more than any individual can pay. Bob Iger and Josh Kushner agreed terms this month to take control of the Lakers at a $12.5 billion valuation. Even at the very top of the American wealth list, that is not a cheque somebody writes. So it gets assembled, layer by layer, under rules specifically designed to stop a buyer borrowing his way in.

The Thirty Per Cent RuleThe layer that keeps almost everybody out

Everything else in the stack70%

The control owner, in cash30% minimum

NFL ......... CONTROL OWNER MUST FUND 30%
NBA AND MLB . 15%
NHL ......... NO RIGID MINIMUM
ON $12.5B ... $3.75 BILLION, IN CASHThis is why the buyer pool is measured in dozens rather than hundreds.

The single most restrictive rule in American sport is not about debt at all. To take control of an NFL franchise a buyer must personally fund at least thirty per cent of the equity, in cash. On a $12.5 billion asset that is $3.75 billion of liquidity, before fees, before reserves, and before anybody has bought a single player. One veteran sports banker puts the requirement plainly: to control an NFL team you probably need a net worth of six or seven billion dollars, because you will have to produce around three billion in cash. Baseball and basketball ask their control owners for fifteen per cent. Hockey sets no rigid minimum at all. Football asks for double, and that difference explains most of what follows.

The CeilingA debt limit that has been raised seven times

2015$250M

2018$350M

2020, the pandemic$500M

2022$600M

2023$700M

New buyer, currentAbout $1.4B

2015 ........ $200M RAISED TO $250M
2018 ........ $350M
MAY 2020 .... $500M, COVID
2021 ........ EXTRA $500M FOR NEW BUYERS
AUTUMN 2022 . $600M
OCTOBER 2023 $700M, NEW BUYERS $1.2B
MAY 2024 .... ACQUISITION DEBT TO $700M
NEW BUYER ... ABOUT $1.4B COMBINEDA proposal reported in 2025 would take the new-buyer figure to $1.6 billion and the standing limit to $1 billion.

The debt ceiling is the part of this structure that keeps moving, and the direction is always the same. In 2015 an NFL club could carry $250 million. By 2018 it was $350 million, by the pandemic $500 million, then $600 million, then $700 million. A separate acquisition allowance for new buyers was introduced in 2021 and raised repeatedly, most recently at the 2024 spring meetings in Nashville, taking the combined figure a new owner may borrow to roughly $1.4 billion. Reporting in 2025 suggested the finance committee wanted $1.6 billion. Set that against a $12.5 billion price and the ceiling is almost beside the point: even fully drawn, borrowing covers barely a tenth of the purchase.

The WaiverAnd the exceptions that make the limit negotiable

Rams, SoFi Stadium$2.25B waiver

Bills, Highmark Stadium$2.2B project

Falcons, Mercedes-Benz Stadium$850M waiver

STANDING LIMIT $700M PER CLUB
RAMS ........ WAIVER OF $2.25B
FALCONS ..... WAIVER OF $850M
BILLS ....... WAIVER GRANTED 2025
PATTERN ..... STADIUMS GET EXEMPTIONSOne Colts owner argued the league should simply raise the limit, since it grants special waivers anyway.

A rule that is waived often enough is a guideline. The NFL caps club debt at $700 million and then routinely exempts stadium construction from it: $2.25 billion for the Rams at SoFi, $850 million for the Falcons at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and a waiver granted to the Bills in 2025 as the cost of Highmark Stadium climbed past two billion from an original estimate of $1.4 billion. The late Colts owner Jim Irsay made the obvious point when the limit was last debated - that he would rather see a higher ceiling in general, because the league grants special waivers anyway. Debt on stadiums is treated as investment. Debt on buying the team is treated as risk.

The PartnersTwo dozen people, nine figures each

Control owner30%

Limited partners, no votes, no controlUp to 24 of them

GROUP CAP ... NO MORE THAN 25 MEMBERS
SEATTLE MATH ABOUT $8.6B FROM INDIVIDUALS
AVERAGE ..... $358,000,000 EACH
THEY RECEIVE ECONOMICS, NOT CONTROL
SEAHAWKS GROUP MEMBERSHIP NOT YET DISCLOSEDSportico's arithmetic on the Seattle sale, after maximum debt, minimum cash and maximum institutional money.

Once the cash and the debt are in, the largest single layer is other people. NFL ownership groups are capped at roughly two dozen members, and those limited partners supply enormous sums for no control whatsoever. Sportico modelled a maximum-leverage structure on the Seattle sale and the result is worth stating slowly: after maxing out the debt, putting down the minimum cash and taking the maximum institutional money, roughly $8.6 billion still had to come from individuals - an average of $358 million each across two dozen partners. The Commanders group under Josh Harris included Magic Johnson and Eric Schmidt. The Broncos group included Condoleezza Rice and Lewis Hamilton. Those names are not decoration. They are the layer. And the assembly can stay private for a remarkably long time: the Khosla family agreed terms for the Seahawks in July 2026 at $9.612 billion, and as the owners prepared to vote on it the full membership of their group had still not been disclosed.

The InstitutionsWhat the NFL let in, and on what terms

Everyone else90%

Private equity, hard ceiling10%

NFL CAP ..... 10% OF A CLUB
NBA, NHL, MLS UP TO 30%
MLB ......... UP TO 20%
MINIMUM STAKE 3%
TEAMS PER FUND SIX
SOVEREIGN WEALTH EXCLUDEDApproved in August 2024 by a vote of 31 to 1.

In August 2024 the NFL became the last major American league to admit institutional money, and it did so on the tightest terms in sport: a hard ceiling of ten per cent of any club, against thirty per cent in the NBA, NHL and MLS and twenty in baseball. A fund must take at least three per cent, may hold stakes in no more than six teams, and gets no economic voting rights at all. Sovereign wealth funds were excluded outright - a pointed contrast with the Premier League, where sovereign capital controls Manchester City and Newcastle. The approved list runs to firms with roughly $2 trillion under management between them, including a consortium nicknamed the Avengers whose members include a platform founded by the former running back Curtis Martin. The vote was 31 to 1, and the single objection came from Mike Brown of the Bengals, the last man running a club his father founded.

The LockSix years, and no say in anything

Years one to five, no exitLocked

Year six, the earliest saleFree

MINIMUM HOLD SIX YEARS
VOTING RIGHTS NONE
OPERATIONAL SAY NONE
WHAT IS BOUGHT APPRECIATION, AND NOTHING ELSETerms an institutional investor would refuse almost anywhere else.

The terms attached to that ten per cent are the most revealing thing in the whole structure. A fund committing hundreds of millions must hold for a minimum of six years, receives no voting rights, and has no say in how the team is run. In any other asset class those conditions would end the conversation. Here they are accepted, because the thing being bought is not influence but exposure - a position in an asset that has appreciated relentlessly for a century and that almost never comes to market. The leagues understood exactly what they were selling. They took the money and kept every decision.

The WorkaroundThe layer that is debt and is not called debt

Senior debt, capped and countedCapped

Preferred and structured equityNot counted

Common equityThe rest

BEHAVES LIKE DEBT
FIXED RETURN . YES
PAID BEFORE COMMON YES
COUNTS AS ... EQUITY
CARRIES VOTES USUALLY NOTThe cap constrains a category, so the market moved the money into a different one.

Here is the part that makes a rules-based system so interesting to watch. The leagues cap debt. They do not cap instruments that behave like debt but are legally equity. So the market built them: preferred and structured equity sleeves carrying a fixed return and a liquidation preference, paid ahead of the common equity, usually with no votes attached. For an owner this is close to ideal - the capital arrives, control stays put, most of the upside stays put, and none of it counts against the borrowing limit. The rule is respected in letter and worked around in substance, which is what happens to every cap ever written.

The League as LenderFootball and basketball both run a bank

National media contracts, the collateralOver $126B

League lending facilitiesAbout $12.15B

Rated by FitchSingle A

NFL FACILITIES ABOUT $12.15 BILLION AVAILABLE
NFL TOTAL DEBT OVER $12 BILLION
RATING ...... A, THIRD-HIGHEST TIER
NBA VEHICLE . NBA HARDWOOD FUNDING LLC
SECURED ON .. NATIONAL BROADCAST REVENUEClubs borrow through the league rather than alone, and the league borrows better than any club could.

The most underappreciated fact in sports finance is that the big leagues operate their own lending operations. NFL clubs borrow through league trusts that issue notes to institutional investors; Fitch rates that paper single A, the third-highest tier available, on the strength of national media contracts worth more than $126 billion through the early 2030s and a collective bargaining agreement that fixes the cost side. The NBA does the same through a vehicle called NBA Hardwood Funding LLC, secured on national broadcast money. The effect is that a franchise borrows at rates it could never obtain on its own balance sheet, because the lender is not really assessing the team. It is assessing the television contract behind all thirty-two of them.

The Yankees StructureA deal that is mostly borrowing

Debt, the bulk of the transactionPrimary

Equity componentAttached

ANNOUNCED ... AUGUST 11, 2026
COUNTERPARTY APOLLO SPORTS CAPITAL
SIZE ........ ABOUT $2.6 BILLION
IMPLIED VALUE NEAR $10 BILLION
STRUCTURE ... PRIMARILY DEBT, EQUITY ATTACHEDBaseball caps a single fund at 15%, so most of the money had to arrive as something other than equity.

Three days before this article was written, the Yankees announced a $2.6 billion transaction with Apollo Sports Capital, on terms reported to run primarily on debt with an equity component attached, implying a club value near $10 billion. It is the cleanest recent illustration of everything above. Baseball limits a single fund to fifteen per cent of a club, so a fund wanting more exposure than that cannot simply buy it. The answer is to lend most of the money and take a slice of ownership alongside. Read the headline and it looks like another record valuation. Read the structure and it is a loan.

The InversionWhen a slice costs more than the whole

Dolphins holding company, 1% traded$12.5B mark

Giants, minority stake$10.3B mark

Seahawks, the entire club, agreed$9.61B

MIAMI 2024 .. ABOUT 13% AT AN $8.1B MARK
MIAMI 2026 .. 1% AT A $12.5B MARK
MOVEMENT .... UP 54% ON AN EIGHTH OF THE VOLUME
SEATTLE ..... 100% AGREED AT $9.61B
RESULT ...... THE SLICE PRICES ABOVE THE WHOLEThe Miami figure bundles a stadium and a Grand Prix, so the comparison is not exact - but the direction is.

And so to the strangest consequence of all of it. Because leagues restricted funds to passive minority positions, they created a security with no governance, no liquidity and no natural buyer - and then allowed that security to set the price of everything around it. In 2024 roughly thirteen per cent of the Miami holding company traded at an $8.1 billion mark. In March 2026 one per cent traded at a $12.5 billion mark: the valuation rose fifty-four per cent on about an eighth of the dollar volume. Four months later an entire NFL franchise was agreed at $9.61 billion, when the estate of Paul Allen accepted a bid for the Seahawks. A minority slice of one club is now marked above the whole of another. Any owner who wants a higher number on the family balance sheet can produce one by selling one per cent to a willing billionaire.

The Rules, League by League

What each league demands of a control owner, and how much outside capital it will tolerate. These are the constraints that decide who can and cannot bid.

League	Control owner must fund	Debt ceiling	PE per fund	PE aggregate	Teams per fund
NFL	30%	About $1.4B, new buyer	10%	10%	6
NBA	15%	$475M per team	20%	30%	8
MLB	15%	Varies	15%	20%	No limit
NHL	No rigid minimum	Varies	20%	30%	5
MLS	Varies	Varies	20%	30%	4

The NFL is the outlier in every column. It asks its control owners for twice the equity of baseball or basketball, admits the least institutional money, and is the only one of the five to exclude sovereign wealth funds outright.

The Arithmetic

The debt ceiling against the price of a team

This gap is the entire reason the other layers exist. In 2015 a $250 million borrowing limit was a meaningful share of a franchise. Today a limit six times larger covers barely a tenth of a marquee club, so the shortfall has to be found from people rather than banks.

The Record Book

The Billion That Was Sent BackThe clearest evidence that these limits bite came during the Commanders sale. The group led by Josh Harris initially proposed a structure carrying the full $1.1 billion of secured debt then permitted, plus a further $1 billion of unsecured debt sitting outside the limit. The league pushed back, and the unsecured billion was stripped out of the final deal. The purchase completed at $6.05 billion using about $1 billion of debt. That episode is why the ceiling has been raised twice since.

How Little of It Is BorrowedFor all the attention debt attracts, NFL clubs are barely leveraged at all. Forbes has counted team debt at an average of about nine per cent of team value, which for most businesses would be an alarmingly conservative balance sheet. The exceptions are stadium projects rather than purchases - the Rams carrying roughly $3.2 billion and the Raiders $1.3 billion, both building costs. The rules do not restrict borrowing because clubs are fragile. They restrict it to control who is allowed to own one.

The Pandemic Did ThisInstitutional money did not arrive because leagues wanted it. It arrived because 2020 emptied the buildings. Baseball clubs collectively took on $8.3 billion of debt and faced up to $3 billion of operating losses in a single year, and the liquidity problem that followed pushed the NBA, NHL and MLS to rewrite their ownership rules. The NFL held out until 2024 and was the last league in. Roughly 74 major American teams, worth $258 billion between them, now have private equity somewhere in the structure.

Why Seattle Was For Sale At AllThe largest transaction in NFL history is happening because of a will. Paul Allen bought the Seahawks in 1997 for a reported $194 million and died in 2018, and his estate was directed to sell both the Seahawks and the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers within a set period. The Blazers went first. His sister Jody ran the football club for seven years in the meantime, and in July 2026 the estate accepted $9.612 billion from the Khosla family, with the proceeds directed to charity. Almost every great franchise eventually comes to market for this reason rather than any other.

What Comes Next Is Estate PlanningThe same pressure is building elsewhere. The estate tax exemptions created in 2017 lapsed at the end of 2025, and four of the NFL's oldest family holdings face succession decisions this decade - the McCaskeys with the Bears since 1921, the Maras with the Giants since 1925, the Rooneys with the Steelers since 1933 and the Fords with the Lions since 1964. Families and individuals still control 27 of the 32 clubs. What changes over the next few years is the capital structure underneath that control, not the names on it.

Sports-King's Note

Now for the fine printLeague ownership rules are not published in full and are amended frequently, so the figures here are drawn from reporting of owners' votes and from law-firm briefings rather than from league documents. The NFL debt position has moved repeatedly: the standing limit for an existing owner rose from $200 million in 2015 through $250 million, $350 million, $500 million in the 2020 pandemic year, $600 million in 2022 and $700 million in October 2023, while a separate acquisition allowance for new buyers was introduced in 2021 and raised to $700 million at the May 2024 spring meetings, giving a combined new-buyer figure of about $1.4 billion. Reporting in 2025 indicated the finance committee favoured moving those to $1 billion and $1.6 billion respectively, and some 2026 coverage cites a new-buyer figure of about $1.5 billion, so treat the ceiling as approximate and rising. Private equity terms are as approved in August 2024 under Resolution JC-7 by a vote of 31 to 1, and other leagues' caps are as summarised in published legal analyses; the NBA raised its per-fund team limit from five to eight with effect from December 2025. Published summaries of the other leagues' ceilings do differ - some news accounts describe the NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS as each permitting up to 30 per cent, while law-firm briefings put baseball lower, at 20 per cent in aggregate and 15 per cent for a single fund. This article follows the legal briefings. The NFL figure of 10 per cent is not in dispute and the league has been reported to be considering whether to raise it. The Seattle arithmetic showing roughly $8.6 billion of individual capital and an average partner cheque of $358 million is Sportico's modelling of a hypothetical maximum-leverage structure, not the terms of any actual transaction. The Yankees transaction with Apollo Sports Capital was announced on August 11, 2026 and is described here as reported; terms have not been published in full. Two transactions referred to throughout were agreed but not completed at the time of writing. The Khosla family agreed to acquire the Seahawks from the Paul G. Allen estate on July 11, 2026 at a reported $9.612 billion; the NFL's finance and ownership policy committees unanimously recommended approval on August 19, a full vote of the 32 owners was scheduled for August 26 in Atlanta requiring at least 24 votes in favour, and the sale was expected to close in September. Neeru Khosla would become controlling owner. The Lakers transaction involving Bob Iger and Josh Kushner is likewise reported rather than completed. Paul Allen's 1997 purchase price for the Seahawks is reported at $194 million. Minority-stake valuations are marks implied by small trades rather than prices for whole clubs, and the Miami figure bundles a stadium and a motor racing event alongside the team, so it is not directly comparable to a franchise-only sale. The charts are illustrative in shape rather than plotted from a full data series. Nothing here is investment advice.

One Last Word

Read the structure rather than the headline and the modern franchise sale stops looking like a purchase at all. It is a syndicate: one person with control and the largest share of the risk, two dozen more with money and no vote, a fund locked in for six years with no vote either, a bank lending against a television contract it trusts more than the team, and somewhere in the middle an instrument that is debt in everything but name because the rules said no more debt. The leagues built every one of those constraints to keep ownership in a small number of familiar hands. They have succeeded, and the price of succeeding is that the capital underneath those hands now belongs to almost everybody else.

The hard numbers, for the road: an NFL control owner must personally fund at least 30 per cent of the equity in cash, against 15 per cent in the NBA and MLB and no rigid minimum in the NHL. The league debt ceiling has been raised repeatedly since 2015, from $200 million to $700 million for an existing owner, with a separate acquisition allowance taking a new buyer to roughly $1.4 billion. Stadium projects are routinely waived past that limit, including $2.25 billion for the Rams and $850 million for the Falcons. Ownership groups are capped at about two dozen people, and Sportico's modelling of the Seattle sale implies roughly $8.6 billion coming from individuals at an average of $358 million each. The NFL admitted private equity in August 2024 by a vote of 31 to 1, capped at 10 per cent of a club and six clubs per fund, with a six-year lock-up, no voting rights and sovereign wealth funds excluded - against 30 per cent caps in the NBA, NHL and MLS and 20 per cent in MLB. Clubs borrow through league facilities rated single A on the strength of media contracts worth more than $126 billion, the NBA through a vehicle called NBA Hardwood Funding LLC. And in March 2026 a one per cent trade marked the Miami holding company at $12.5 billion, four months before an entire NFL franchise was agreed at $9.61 billion.