There is an old joke in the U.K. about rich people who like to own soccer clubs (what we call “football”, correctly, over here in Britain). How do you make a million bucks? Make a billion bucks and then invest in a soccer team.
Tod Boehly laughs when I put the point to him during our mainstage interview at SXSW London. As a billionaire investor with stakes in Chelsea FC in London, and the Los Angeles Dodgers (baseball) and Los Angeles Lakers (basketball) in America, he knows more than most about the perils of investing in sports teams. “Risky” is a word often attached to the sector, given the vagaries of form and injuries.
Successful investing in sport needs a few things to be true to work, Boehly says. “These are all giant brands, right?” he says of his sports portfolio. “They’re bigger than the underlying activity. The brand is global, the awareness is global, the fan base is global. They’re more than football clubs, right? They’re lifestyles, they’re entertainment platforms. Everyone wants something to root for—and these give people something to root for.”
Sport, in a world of artificial intelligence and synthetics, is also very human, in all its brilliance and fallibility. The final-minute penalty miss will bring cheers of delight and groans of horror, dependent on the team you support. AI finds such a random rollercoaster of emotions difficult to copy.
