Does the thought of private equity investors buying into big-time sports bug you? Does reading about it trouble your comfortable view of sport as a quaint side hustle for billionaires building ticket-driven empires?

Yeah? Well, like many of you, this past summer we were shaken by the preposterous idea FIFA’s World Cup could be sold off to PE. It seemed like a flagrant penalty box take-down. An outrageous outcome.

As background: PE describes investors who pool their resources to invest in companies with the goal of eventually, after some level of financial support, selling their equity position for a multiple of their initial investment. Big ROI.

So, let’s start with those last two words, the ones tied to return on investment.

PE usually hunts for undervalued assets to multiply its investment down the road. It means seeking an acceptable “value” price is mandatory and getting turned down, at least initially, is not unexpected.

All of this is classic financing/investing, so why has this PE surge suddenly hit sport traditionalists so profoundly over the past few years? And more importantly, why didn’t the FIFA sell-off work?

We think its failure had nothing to do with whether it was a good idea, who was behind it or whether it benefited the game. Nah, FIFA’s failure was simple: It set its asking price too low and FIFA constituents (notably UEFA) intervened.

To be clear, the quadrennial Men’s World Cup is easily one of the three most........

© Sports Business Journal