Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, is itching to get involved in the National Football League. While Amazon already partnered with the NFL for Thursday Night Football broadcasts, a report from CBS Sports indicates Bezos has aspirations of expanding his role with the league by becoming an NFL owner.
The multi-billionaire is already close with Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyer and has the public support of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, so if he wants to join their ranks he already has some built-in support.
Bezos also enjoyed last year’s Super Bowl alongside NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in the commissioner’s suite.
But with no teams currently available for sale, are there any teams that Bezos could have in his sights?
Per the report, there are at least two teams that could become available in the coming years.
There are not any teams currently on the market, though the Seattle Seahawks will be sold at some point following the death of Paul Allen last year, and there is considerable concern in the league office about the mounting lawsuits from various heirs to former Broncos owner Pat Bowlen, with that team possibly heading to the market in a few years as well.
It will be interesting to see if Bezos ever has the opportunity to purchase a team, but if the chance presents itself there is no one more equipped to pull the trigger on a deal than the Amazon founder. And with current owners already courting Bezos and comfortable with him joining their ranks, it could be a painless transition.
About Jeff Bezos
Bezos founded Amazon.com in 1994 after a cross-country drive from New York to Seattle where he wrote up the Amazon business plan on the way
Like most great start-ups he initially set up the company in his garage. Bezos left his well-paying job at a New York City hedge fund after learning “about the rapid growth in Internet use,” which coincided with a new U.S. Supreme Court ruling that exempted mail order companies from collecting sales taxes in states where they lack a physical presence.
Amazon famously began as a book company but has since expanded to a wide variety of products and services, most recently video streaming and audio streaming. Amazon.com is currently the world’s largest Internet sales company, as well as the world’s largest provider of cloud infrastructure services, through its Amazon Web Services arm.
In May 2016, Bezos sold slightly more than one million shares of his holdings in the company for $671 million, making it the largest amount of money he had ever raised in a sale of his Amazon holdings.
In 2000, Bezos founded Blue Origin, a human spaceflight startup company. In 2013, Bezos discussed commercial spaceflight opportunities and strategies with Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group and chairman of Virgin Galactic.
In 2017, Bezos overtook Bill Gates as the world’s richest person.
