Gerry Cardinale brings vision and financial clout to Fenway Sports Group’s growth plan, and an NBA team is ‘a real top priority’ - The Boston Globe
For more than two decades, whenever Gerry Cardinale looked in on the moves of Fenway Sports Group, he kept catching a reflection of his own business vision.
Now a member of its innermost circle, Cardinale features large in the growing presence of FSG in the wide world of global sports conglomerates.
Once his RedBird Capital Partners’ $750 million check cleared last March, Cardinale became the third-largest shareholder in FSG, the parent company of the Red Sox, Liverpool Football Club, and NESN.
Two big FSG moves quickly followed: A $900 million purchase of the NHL’s Pittsburgh’s Penguins, and a significant investment in LeBron James’ SpringHill Entertainment company.
“Everything’s in play, I would say,” said Cardinale.
Adding an NBA franchise is “a real top priority,” with a cricket team, another soccer team — MLS, NWSL, or from another continent — WNBA and, maybe one day, an NFL team also appearing on the wish-list.
“I would be very disappointed if I don’t significantly increase the amount of capital that we’ve invested in Fenway to date for more opportunities,” said Cardinale, whose RedBird firm owns stakes in multiple sports, entertainment, live event, media, and data analytics companies, including the XFL football league. “I hope and I think we’re going to have that opportunity to do so. That’s what buying into that platform should be all about.”
FSG is valued at nearly $10 billion by Forbes, which ranks third among the sports company titans list.
For FSG to grow to the size its leadership sees as possible may require more than private capital like RedBird’s can realistically provide.
Cardinale believes FSG, as well as other sports conglomerates and teams, may yet become a public company. That’s a path he and Billy Beane attempted with their RedBall SPAC (special purpose acquisition company, an alternative to the IPO route) in the summer of 2020 before Cardinale purchased a seat at the private table of FSG.
“Gerry is a legendary deal maker, with unmatched relationships across the sports and media landscape. Our recent investments into SpringHill and the Penguins would not have happened without him,” said Red Sox president and FSG partner Sam Kennedy. “He’s assembled an extraordinary team of people at RedBird who have brought new vision, energy, and investment experience to FSG as we explore new opportunities for growth.”
While Cardinale, Steinbrenner, and the Nets were putting the finishing touches on YES, it just so happened to coincide with Henry and Werner approaching Goldman Sachs in 2001 for financial assistance in their bid to buy the Red Sox.
“I was very intrigued by what they were doing,” said Cardinale. “I said [to Henry and Werner], ‘I would love the money to go in and own just NESN, so I can put the money in and help you fund the whole thing, but I want to just own NESN,’ because in my mind, I was intrigued by what I’m naturally intrigued by today. Fast forward 20 years, which was the opportunities to move forward the RSN [regional sports network] model.”
Henry and Werner declined Cardinale’s NESN spin-off offer. Seven years later, in 2008, Cardinale almost got ahead of an FSG move, making two attempts to buy Liverpool of England’s Premier League.
Two years later, FSG did.
A month before his FSG investment, RedBird bought a minority stake in the Los Angeles-based Wasserman sports marketing and talent management company. Forbes ranked Wasserman’s sports agency two years ago as the second-largest, holding $5.7 billion in contracts and garnering $331 million in commissions. Among its stable of baseball players are Red Sox’ outfielder Kiké Hernández, Yankees outfielder Giancarlo Stanton, and Tigers infielder Javier Báez.
Cardinale sees no conflict in his stakes in both FSG and Wasserman.
“There’s adjacency issues that you need to sort of work through, which we did, but the reality is, there’s no issue there — if I need to recuse myself in something, it’s fine, it’s not a big deal,” said Cardinale. “Anybody with common sense would tell you that I’m not involved at all in trades, I’m not interested in being an agent.
“I’m not going to sit here and tell Chaim Bloom who to trade for or anything else.”
FSG’s next steps, should they be finalized, can very much be viewed as staking another claim in that new, more global, much larger, and possibly public frontier.
“Everything’s in play I would say but as usual we’re going to have a very strict funnel. The bar has never been higher in terms of what really fits in the [FSG] portfolio,” said Cardinale. “You should think about us looking to add other teams and the businesses around them. You should look at us building businesses within the platform itself, like I’ve done in my career at RedBird and Goldman, and you should look at continuing to evaluate the constructs,” meaning staying private or going public.
For more than two decades, whenever Gerry Cardinale looked in on the moves of Fenway Sports Group, he kept catching a reflection of his own business vision.
Now a member of its innermost circle, Cardinale features large in the growing presence of FSG in the wide world of global sports conglomerates.
Once his RedBird Capital Partners’ $750 million check cleared last March, Cardinale became the third-largest shareholder in FSG, the parent company of the Red Sox, Liverpool Football Club, and NESN.
Two big FSG moves quickly followed: A $900 million purchase of the NHL’s Pittsburgh’s Penguins, and a significant investment in LeBron James’ SpringHill Entertainment company.
“Everything’s in play, I would say,” said Cardinale.
Adding an NBA franchise is “a real top priority,” with a cricket team, another soccer team — MLS, NWSL, or from another continent — WNBA and, maybe one day, an NFL team also appearing on the wish-list.
“I would be very disappointed if I don’t significantly increase the amount of capital that we’ve invested in Fenway to date for more opportunities,” said Cardinale, whose RedBird firm owns stakes in multiple sports, entertainment, live event, media, and data analytics companies, including the XFL football league. “I hope and I think we’re going to have that opportunity to do so. That’s what buying into that platform should be all about.”
FSG is valued at nearly $10 billion by Forbes, which ranks third among the sports company titans list.
For FSG to grow to the size its leadership sees as possible may require more than private capital like RedBird’s can realistically provide.
Cardinale believes FSG, as well as other sports conglomerates and teams, may yet become a public company. That’s a path he and Billy Beane attempted with their RedBall SPAC (special purpose acquisition company, an alternative to the IPO route) in the summer of 2020 before Cardinale purchased a seat at the private table of FSG.
“Gerry is a legendary deal maker, with unmatched relationships across the sports and media landscape. Our recent investments into SpringHill and the Penguins would not have happened without him,” said Red Sox president and FSG partner Sam Kennedy. “He’s assembled an extraordinary team of people at RedBird who have brought new vision, energy, and investment experience to FSG as we explore new opportunities for growth.”
While Cardinale, Steinbrenner, and the Nets were putting the finishing touches on YES, it just so happened to coincide with Henry and Werner approaching Goldman Sachs in 2001 for financial assistance in their bid to buy the Red Sox.
“I was very intrigued by what they were doing,” said Cardinale. “I said [to Henry and Werner], ‘I would love the money to go in and own just NESN, so I can put the money in and help you fund the whole thing, but I want to just own NESN,’ because in my mind, I was intrigued by what I’m naturally intrigued by today. Fast forward 20 years, which was the opportunities to move forward the RSN [regional sports network] model.”
Henry and Werner declined Cardinale’s NESN spin-off offer. Seven years later, in 2008, Cardinale almost got ahead of an FSG move, making two attempts to buy Liverpool of England’s Premier League.
Two years later, FSG did.
A month before his FSG investment, RedBird bought a minority stake in the Los Angeles-based Wasserman sports marketing and talent management company. Forbes ranked Wasserman’s sports agency two years ago as the second-largest, holding $5.7 billion in contracts and garnering $331 million in commissions. Among its stable of baseball players are Red Sox’ outfielder Kiké Hernández, Yankees outfielder Giancarlo Stanton, and Tigers infielder Javier Báez.
Cardinale sees no conflict in his stakes in both FSG and Wasserman.
“There’s adjacency issues that you need to sort of work through, which we did, but the reality is, there’s no issue there — if I need to recuse myself in something, it’s fine, it’s not a big deal,” said Cardinale. “Anybody with common sense would tell you that I’m not involved at all in trades, I’m not interested in being an agent.
“I’m not going to sit here and tell Chaim Bloom who to trade for or anything else.”
FSG’s next steps, should they be finalized, can very much be viewed as staking another claim in that new, more global, much larger, and possibly public frontier.
“Everything’s in play I would say but as usual we’re going to have a very strict funnel. The bar has never been higher in terms of what really fits in the [FSG] portfolio,” said Cardinale. “You should think about us looking to add other teams and the businesses around them. You should look at us building businesses within the platform itself, like I’ve done in my career at RedBird and Goldman, and you should look at continuing to evaluate the constructs,” meaning staying private or going public.
