Lin Bin, the billionaire cofounder of Chinese internet giant Xiaomi, has agreed to buy a 1% stake in the Miami Dolphins football team's holding company at a valuation of $12.5 billion.

The deal, first reported by Sportico on Tuesday, makes 58-year-old Lin the latest known tycoon from Asia to invest in a sports team. Others include Alibaba chairman Joseph Tsai (NBA's Brooklyn Nets); King Power executive chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha (Leicester City soccer club in England); Forrest Li (Lion City Sailors soccer club in Singapore) of Singapore-based e-commerce and online game company Sea; Vincent Tan (Cardiff City soccer club in Wales), who controls Berjaya Corp.; and Peter Lim (La Liga's Valencia), who has healthcare businesses in Singapore and Malaysia with his Singapore-listed Thomson Medical Group.

The $12.5 billion valuation is a record for a minority transaction. Xiaomi didn’t respond to requests for comment. Last year, billionaire Julia Koch acquired a 10% stake in the New York Giants at a $10 billion valuation.

Forbes estimated the Dolphins’ valuation at $7.5 billion before the start of the 2025 NFL season, making them the 11th-most valuable team in the league. The NFL’s 32 teams are worth an average $7.1 billion.

Lin, who holds U.S. citizenship but continues to manage Beijing-headquartered Xiaomi as its vice chairman, has a net worth of $10.5 billion that is mostly based on a stake in the Hong Kong-listed technology giant, according to Forbes estimates. He was previously an executive at Microsoft and Google after earning a master's degree in computer science from Drexel University.

Xiaomi is headed by billionaire Lei Jun, whose fortune stands at $25.7 billion thanks to his own company stake. The company has been making inroads in China’s cut-throat electric vehicle market while selling smartphones, which was the world’s third-largest by shipment in the third quarter of 2025 (the latest data available), after Samsung and Apple, according to IDC.

Lin agreed to make the investment as the value of many sports teams reached a record. Thanks in part to surging media rights fees, the collective value of the world’s top 50 sports teams soared to a whopping $353 billion last year, according to Forbes estimates. In 2024, the Miami Dolphins was valued at $8.1 billion when its billionaire majority owner Stephen Ross sold a 13% stake to investors including Ares Management.

© Forbes