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PaperclipPerfector
1d ago
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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What is going on with sports team owners?
In the space of a few weeks:
-- The owner of the Los Angeles Lakers has been forced to sell (to a Kushner brother) the team because of an SEC investigation into financial irregularities at insurance companies he controlled. (((I'll leave the questions about the Trump admin investigating a businessman who then is forced to sell a prized asset to a Trump-family-affiliated entity to Pablo Torre to unwind)))
-- The owner of the San Francisco 49ers was arrested in an East Palestine, OH trailer park in a human trafficking sting, apparently trying to hire a $140 prostitute. He plead guilty to some minor misdemeanor charges and spent a night in jail.
-- The Los Angeles Clippers have effectively been neutered for the next 5-8 years by the NBA's decision in their salary-cap circumvention scheme, in which Kawhi Leonard was paid extra money outside his contract under the table through no-show endorsement deals from affiliated companies.
-- Investigations into the Los Angeles Dodgers are coming to the forefront, involving financial irregularities in their ownership group.
It could all be a coincidence, but it feels weird astrologically.
Shouldn't he be able to easily afford a $1400 D1 escort from UC Berkeley or OSU instead of trailer trash?
Explanations that have been mooted in my home:
-- It's a fetish. He wants the dirtiest, cheapest trailer park whore he can find. He can't really let himself be free with a woman of his social class. He can be totally free with trailer trash. It turns him on. I've known men who liked their women a little on the trashy side, though this is another level.
-- He's cheap, and that's how you end up a billionaire.
-- He made the utterly stupid calculation (see: Coldplay couple) that no one would catch him in an East Palestine trailer park. The problem being that when you are caught in an East Palestine trailer park, there is no possible innocent explanation, even after the charges are reduced.
Looping in @sleepyegg, @07mk, and @JarJarJedi
You need to take into consideration that York may not be the billionaire you think he is. I obviously don't know his asset profile, but it's not his team, it's his family's. He hasn't had a real job in his life other than with the team, and he's a generation removed from any inheritance. The only entrepreneur in the family was the grandfather, Edward DeBartolo, Sr., who was a shopping mall magnate. DeBartolo was the owner of the Penguins, and his daughter, Denise DeBartolo York, was the team president and an executive in the shopping mall business. When the 49ers went up for sale in 1977, he couldn't buy them outright, as NFL ownership policy precludes owners from having a stake in any other pro sports team. So he gave the team to his son, Eddie. The real estate market collapsed at the end of the 1980s and DeBartolo needed cash, and just as the Penguins were winning their first championship, he was forced to sell the team. This didn't solve the cashflow problem, and he was forced to take the company public, which led him to retire. He passed away in 1994, and the shares of the company were acquired by Simon a couple years later.
Fast forward to the late 90s, and Eddie, who had always had his hands in questionable business dealings, got in some hot water over public corruption in some kind of riverboat gambling deal. The NFL suspended him for a year, but instead of serving the suspension he decided to trade his share of the team to his sister and her husband in exchange for what was left of the family business. Denise's son Jed is at this point in college, and after a brief stint at a financial firm he took a bullshit nepo job with the 49ers. Denise gave him day-to-day control of the team in 2008, in a decision that was widely mocked due to his complete lack of any experience other than liking football. Nonetheless, he turned around what had by that point become a moribund franchise, and everyone forgot about it. In 2024 he acquired enough shares in the team to become principal owner.
Earlier this year, Jed filed for divorce. He and his wife had been living in a large house in the Bay Area, but instead of just buying another house like one would expect a billionaire to do, he moved back to a house his parents own in Youngstown. He doesn't have any money other than what he earned from the team, and he just spent a large portion of that money to acquire a controlling share. NFL ownership policy requires that final voting authority is vested in a single individual, and unless he owns significantly more than 51%, which given his history is doubtful, his net worth is somewhere north of 4 billion dollars. Since he's getting divorced, and acquired an unknown but likely significant portion of the team subsequent to his 2011 marriage, I'd estimate that he's going to owe his ex-wife at least a billion dollars as part of the divorce settlement. Ownership policy prevents him from giving her a share of the team that would eliminate his controlling interest, and he likely doesn't have enough non-voting shares to make a significant dent. This means he has to set off the settlement with other assets, but again, he's unlikely to have this kind of money, and what he does have contributes to the overall pie.
The upshot is that his attorneys are going to have to get creative when it comes to figuring out a settlement, and now is definitely not the time to be taking international flights (which would likely be private or at least first class), or spending a lot of time in Vegas, or doing anything else suggesting he has a lot of disposable cash, and there's a good chance that he doesn't have a ton of disposable cash at the moment. So you have a guy who is getting divorced after 15 years of marriage, likely never hired a prostitute before, is a thousand miles away from his kids in a town not exactly known for excitement or for having a lot of high-end call girls. So when he wanted to get his rocks off, he went online and tried to find some local whores who he could afford to pay and, at the very least, would be cheap enough that his ex's attorney wouldn't be asking too many questions about where a few grand disappeared to, or why he bought plane tickets to Australia.
So the argument is that he is actually being very frugal with hiring trailer prostitutes considering his upbringing and lifestyle, compounded with the financial stress of divorce. Sounds reasonable. Doesn't even seem to hurt him in the negotiations for asset division, unlike a secret sugar baby girlfriend.
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