Has anyone ever bought a professional sports team out of spite?
So weird question I know and I’m not quite sure if I’m allowed to post something like this in this subreddit but I was watching Succession and at one point one of the characters Roman buys the Hearts Football club for his ultra wealthy Dad’s birthday thinking it was his beloved team. Turns out his Dad is actually a Hibs fan one of their chief rivals. It would be like buying an Arsenal fan Tottenham or a Red Sox fan the Yankees. So this had me thinking of what absurd things I would possibly do if I was obscenely wealthy and could buy a rival sports team and shrug it off like it was nothing.
One of the things that came to mind would be since I’m a diehard Bengals fan instead of buying the Bengals I would buy either the Steelers or Ravens (Sorry Browns but your franchise does this well enough on your own already) and just absolutely run the franchise into the ground, straight up just Hindenburging it, napalming it to the ground, and then salting the Earth so nothing grows, you know cause some real irreparable damage. Make all the wrong decisions, hire absolute buffoons at all levels, make idiotic draft picks like drafting 4 tight ends in the same draft, pay way too much for bad players and get cheap with the vets, and occasionally make some beneficial trades to the Bengals. I would absolutely love to turn their respected franchises into laughingstocks.
So I’m curious as to if anyone knows of any examples of this happening to any sports teams in real life?
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Never heard of it happening but the owner of the Washington Commanders, Dan Synder, apparently is refusing to sell his team to Jeff Bezos out of spite. Bezos owns the Washington Post which published a series of stories that alleged improper workplace conditions, including sexual harassment and misconduct within the franchise. Snyder is set to sell the team to Josh Harris who has a net worth of $6b. Bezos net worth is $138b.
Edit: Josh Harris would be the led investor with another 20 other investors.
Not sure but James Dolan operates one out of spite
Derek Jeter may have spent more than he wanted for the Marlins to keep ARod from buying them. Spite was definitely involved in those negotiations.