LeBron James to join FSG as full partner and become part owner of the Red Sox(among other FSG entities)
- Thread starter RedOctober3829
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So because he didn't pass some reporter's 30 second quiz in a locker room (Probably before a game) he's accused of being a fake. Yeah, there's a solid hot take. Let's face it, he has a big target on his back from every conservative who wants to discredit his efforts to fight racism.
The attempts to find a modern way to call him a "Dumb N-word" are pretty amazing too.
And this is all assuming he has any interest in being an active participant in ownership versus this being a passive money-making investment for him. He's been part of ownership of Liverpool for 10 years now. Do we know what influence he's had there, if any?
I think it's fine that he's more invested in FSG. I'm not sure if there's anything to it other than money though.
My guess is he takes the Magic/Dodgers role. Sits next to Henry/Werner with a Sox cap.
It stemmed from this I believe - https://sports.yahoo.com/amphtml/lebron-james-king-reading-first-171942480.html
And sure, it certainly wreaks of basically posing for cameras. That said, the guy is doing a world of actual good with regards to social justice, voting rights, etc. so if he wants to pretend to read a book I’ll chuckle and move on.
Seems that the desperation to shit on the guy is even more amazing.
You're effectively saying it's impossible to call any black guy dumb.
There are dumb black guys just like there are dumb white guys and dumb asian guys etc etc.
That you think no one could believe any particular black guy is dumb without having a racial animus toward him is insane.
No, it's when you go out on a limb to do it like this book reading episode. Who else would get "called out" on something like that? A white athlete? I doubt it very much.
Wait, so the reporters must be in on it, too! All of the staff of 98.5, too?
My god, it's a vast conspiracy.
You make great points - it will be surprising to some of us if he is a regular at Fenway but I was thinking more about the brand as well as influencing the club from a macro perspective. He may be entirely passive but its a pretty powerful resource to have the one of the greatest active athletes alive with a stake in your success. At the very least, it might help to further change the perception around the Sox with regards to race issues.
It sound silly but just his affiliation with the club might be enough to convince players to come to Boston if they are choosing between opportunities. Or maybe not but its hard to see the downside unless the Sox are hoping that @Sam Ray Not is going to bolster their rotation for the upcoming season (though Steph Curry is also a Sox fan - SRN likely has some conflicting issues to work through on this news).
This also makes him partial owner of NESN. I'd rather watch LeBron highlights on loop than one more episode of Charlie Moore or a My Pillow commercial.
And yet, we’re having this discussion when we could be having any number of other discussions.
Of all the reasons to criticize Lebron, attacking his intelligence is not even registering on my radar. 1) He strikes me as a pretty smart, savvy dude, even if not educated with an ivy league pedigree. 2) His intelligence is just not one of the main characteristics out there by which one would naturally judge him, given his role in society, so why would that be a line of criticism? And 3) yup, dumb black guy is a common racist trope, so one has to wonder why it’s employed reflexively as a line of criticism when criticizing intelligence just isn’t really a criteria for most athletes, or one—frankly—that you have any basis to judge.
But it is still amusing.
Dude is now a partner in FSG. Says something. But I guess he could be squirreling away gold.
It's your repeated citing of 98.5 to bolster your ridiculous take that makes it art.
Eh, guys like JJ Watt, Edelman, etc. get called out all the time for coming across as fake. It's not just a LeBron thing. They all do a lot of good and it's a silly criticism.
I've hated LeBron the basketball player for his entire NBA career.
I also acknowledge the pressure and spotlight he's been under since High School. And through it all, he's not only come out scandal-free, he's proven to be a positive and even outspoken (at times) voice for change, rather than a shrinking violet.
Yeah, taking talents to Sount Beach was cheezy af, but given the hand he was dealt as a human, he's been pretty remarkable - on the court and off.
I still loathe him on the hoops court.
I also acknowledge the pressure and spotlight he's been under since High School. And through it all, he's not only come out scandal-free, he's proven to be a positive and even outspoken (at times) voice for change, rather than a shrinking violet.
Yeah, taking talents to Sount Beach was cheezy af, but given the hand he was dealt as a human, he's been pretty remarkable - on the court and off.
I still loathe him on the hoops court.
He's a man with a lot of money and inside view of how much money you can make owning a sports team. It will be nothing more than that, just like it has been with Liverpool. He'll have a small handful of token appearances at Fenway and Anfield when he signs paperwork or they win a championship. I have no problem with that, rich people need to make money too, and he can invest however he wants.
I do have a problem with him standing up for social justice only until it hurts his checkbook. Because that is exactly what he did when Daryl Morey criticized China over their handling of Hong Kong, and China responded by financially impacting the NBA.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/what-did-lebron-james-say-about-china-nearly-everyone-else-ncna1069131
He could use his popularity in China and across the world to fight modern day slavery and concentration camps in Xinjiang, or oppose the removal of rights and the severe military crackdown in Hong Kong, but he feels "uneducated" about it so he's just going to shut up and sell shoes there. I find that appalling, but it's what every other major corporation and rich person around the world does too, so I guess I can't complain that hard about it.
It's a well understood concept and predates the rabid political fundamentalists of Twitter. It will still exist conceptually long after Twitter has finished circling the bowl and entered the septic tank.
As for LeBron, until he was a Laker I was a fan, so I've got no problems with him becoming part of FSG. Given his pile of money, when Henry decides to step down he's likely to make a move to take it over entirely. Poor Rough.
Are we doing the same deep dive on the business history and investment portfolios of every single principle in the FSG, or the just the high profile athlete, that some of us have a fanboy dislike of?
I understand that. Nevertheless in 2021 the usage of that term is strongly correlated with other things.
I realize that Lebron brings out strong emotions in people, but please leave the V&N posts off of the main board. We have a place for those.
You apparently didn't arrive until long after Henry bought the Red Sox. And have apparently missed the litany of criticisms of the other minority partners in FSG.
You Twitter folk correlate it with other things. It's just one reason why the other 96% of humanity despises you guys.
I wonder what LeBron’s angle is with this investment. From a purely financial perspective, I can’t imagine a minority stake in FSG at the current valuation is his best investment choice, and as one of the world’s most famous people, LeBron already enjoys the celebrity and other perks that non-famous rich people buy sports franchises to obtain. There’s a record of minority owners of MLB teams becoming familiar to the ownership community and therefore gaining swift approval when they choose to buy a controlling interest in a team, so that’s one possibility. I guess I’d be surprised, though, if owning an MLB team was high on LeBron’s post-basketball bucket list.
Wondering if the experience of being a partial owner of a 4 major North American sports franchise is something he thinks might be beneficial towards him being a majority owner of an NBA franchise after he retires.
How could you possibly have forgotten the thread about Henry's purchase and everyone's misgivings about his intentions? We wasted petabytes of web space arguing about it. That's before we get into Larry Lucchino and others. We're Red Sox fans, we're naturally suspicious of the team's owners.
He wants to own sports teams. So being in a position to buy out John Henry' stake when the time comes has to appeal to him. The Red Sox are a flagship franchise in MLB.
Maybe I’m mistaken, but I don’t think LBJ is anywhere near flush enough to buy out JWH and his partners. At most, he’d be a Magic*-style frontman for the people putting up the bulk of the money. If he wants to do that, he doesn’t need to plow a sizable chunk of his fortune into FSG now — he could invest his money in actual, money-making businesses, as Magic did in the 1990s and 2000s.
*- Or George W. Bush style, but Magic as the former NBA star is the more obvious parallel.
The I-bankers might chop it up and repackage FSG as SPAC content and LBJ would add some marketing panache and premium pricing for the masses. And if not, sports franchishes prices generally seem to perform pretty well for the mega-wealthy investor.
Although I wonder if the NBA will care if FSG and a still playing LeBron, adds an NBA team to its sports team portfolio. I can't belieive the NBA would really want a current player having a finacial interest in another team.
Although I wonder if the NBA will care if FSG and a still playing LeBron, adds an NBA team to its sports team portfolio. I can't belieive the NBA would really want a current player having a finacial interest in another team.
Not going too much further with this, because of mod admonition about v & n, but of course I remember the consternation about whether the Henry group was the right fit for the Red Sox. I don't recall much of that being focused on ethical and political concerns about their business histories, ie., China, rather that people were suspicious that they were the best group to run our hallowed institution. I think some here were straining to ennoble their more visceral dislike of Lebron. At the end of the day, he's investing some money, probably will have no input on the day in day in day out operations of the club, and IMO, his profile, and the admiration he enjoys from many other athletes, could only help the franchise, or least certainly not hurt it.
I’ve been saying this forever: he’s been under the spotlight since he was 15 or 16, and the worst things he’s done are accept a Hummer and change teams.
dude is SQUEAKY clean.
He doesn't need to buy out everyone. Just Henry. And he might not be flush enough yet, but he's getting there.
This year he'll pass the $1 Billion mark in terms of earnings. That is pre-taxes and agent fees, etc, but also before you add in investment incomes and the growth of any assets he's bought. So I have no clue what he's actually worth. Not enough to buy a whole team, but most of the time people go in together to buy teams even if they're multi billionaires, and take out some loans. He could be the principal owner or at least the managing owner if he really wanted to once his career is done and he thinks he can spend more time actively managing something. But does he really want to be the public face if it means taking blame? He seems to be the guy that wants everybody to like him, even if he should know the nature of sports means there are winners and losers, and people hate losing and therefore the people responsible for that loss. Maybe he's gotten better at that as he's gotten older, I haven't followed the non-Celtics NBA as closely as I did ten years ago.
https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/lebron-james-will-surpass-1-billion-in-career-earnings-in-2021-per-report/
Michael Jordan owns almost all of the Charlotte Hornets, but he has his own division of Nike (a cash cow nobody else has ever gotten), he bought one of the least valuable NBA teams when the league franchise values were lower relative to other sports leagues, and as big of a marketing deal Lebron is, Jordan was enormously larger in his era. I don't know that any other ex athlete is going to be able to earn enough to own 90+% of a sports franchise in the NBA, NFL, or MLB.
Calling LeBron a dumbass has to be one of the worst posts here since "The AFC East is wide-open".
Maybe not from the earnings from their playing days. But Mathieu Flamini for example is worth many many billions now from a business he started after his playing days.
I felt compelled to google this and I looked at a bunch of sources. It seems pretty unlikely or at least unclear that that is true, FWIW.
https://www.goal.com/en-us/amp/news/what-is-mathieu-flaminis-net-worth-how-much-does-the-former/1taouhp8zhcwg1m5s6kzpu8bay
He started that almost at the beginning of his top level career. Which is nuts. Yeah, incredibly fortunate off the field investments could lead to that, although I'd think players would want to keep focused on that investment, but who knows. I guess you could put Jordan getting his own Nike division under that same rare investment umbrella. I just don't think player salaries and off field endorsements are growing enough compared to team valuations to make that possible from that route.
While the baseball franchise may be tough to see profit on its own, a shrewd businessman may look at the ownership's upcoming 2 million sq. ft. retail/residential/office(?) development around Fenway as a huge boon to the bottom line in the future. Although a development group will be managing this real estate, I have to think FSG will see a not insignificant chunk of change. So even if baseball revenues stay stagnant, the lease money will be flush. And he could also use the FSG to help his other ownership interests: for example, Blaze Pizza as the official pizza of Fenway Park sold at concessions? A flagship Nike store?
And he'll have a more-than-steady stream of income from Nike regardless of how much longer James plays or his other investments fare. He started a $1 billion lifetime deal with Nike in 2015 (https://www.businessinsider.com/lebron-james-nike-deal-exceeds-1-billion-maverick-carter-says-2016-5), so I figure somewhere north of $800 million remains on this.
Whether he can invest more or not all depends on "Space Jam." Kidding. I can't see how this is a bad thing in any way, though, in all seriousness.
This seems like a pure investment opportunity or as someone suggested earlier a possible stepping stone to ownership in the NBA. If he wanted hands-on ownership in MLB, he could be a hero in Cleveland again, and frankly I'm a bit disappointed to see him buying a piece of ownership in a team other than the Indians. John Sherman originally bought a minority stake in the Indians, believed to be about 20%, with the intention to gradually increase his share and eventually replace the Dolans as majority owner. Sherman always wanted the Royals though, and three years later he had that opportunity. For about the last 1½ years that share he left behind in Cleveland has been vacant and the Dolans continue to slash payroll to keep profit margins up.
Not that I've heard talk of it, but if LeBron wanted to be a silent partner for now and step up as an acting MLB team owner after his playing days are over, the opportunity was certainly there for him in Cleveland... and in replacing the Dolans he would have instantly been viewed as the savior of Cleveland sports again.
Not that I've heard talk of it, but if LeBron wanted to be a silent partner for now and step up as an acting MLB team owner after his playing days are over, the opportunity was certainly there for him in Cleveland... and in replacing the Dolans he would have instantly been viewed as the savior of Cleveland sports again.
I think he's shown pretty consistently that business opportunity comes before "home towns" for him. Which is probably smart. He's not a fan, he's an absurdly wealthy businessman.