South Florida’s sports owners are among the wealthiest in U.S.
It will surprise nobody that Miami Heat owner Micky Arison and Miami Dolphins owner Steve Ross have a lot of money. But when you rank them against the other rich owners in their respective sports, it becomes clear that they have a lot of money.
Forbes this week revealed its “definitive rankings of the wealthiest Americans,” and as part of that, the financial magazine also broke down the country’s richest sports team owners for 2018.
No. 1 is Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer ($42.3 billion), whose net worth somehow dwarfs that of runnerup Paul Allen ($20.3 billion), owner of the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers. (Ballmer and Allen both made most of their money from a little company called Microsoft.)
You don’t have to go much further down the list to find South Florida’s sports tycoons.
Arison, also chairman of Carnival Corporation, ranks No. 5 with a net worth of $9.4 billion. That puts him third among NBA team owners. Arison is also the 49th-richest person in the United States, according to the Forbes 400, and the third-richest Floridian.
Ross, the real estate developer who is chairman of The Related Companies, is tied for No. 7 on the list of richest sports owners with a net worth of 7.6 billion. He’s the fourth-richest NFL owner, behind Allen, Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper (who is a hedge-fund manager based in Miami Beach) and the Los Angeles Rams’ Stan Kroenke (who also owns the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche and English soccer power Arsenal). Ross is tied with Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan.
Vincent Viola, owner of the Florida Panthers, checks in at No. 38 with a not-too-shabby net worth of $2.4 billion. The founder and chairman of Virtu Financial ranks ninth among NHL owners.
Bruce Sherman, who just finished his first season as the Miami Marlins’ majority owner, wasn’t among the 42 sports owners who made the Forbes 400.
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