Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
To say that the brothers Clark and Dan Hunt are on a winning streak would be an understatement. The NFL team their family owns, the Kansas City Chiefs, are two time defending Super Bowl champions, and as they kick off their season this week, they have real hopes of being the first team to three peat a Super Bowl win. Clark Hunt, who's the older of the two brothers, served as chair of the NFL committee that recently finally made it possible for private equity investors to own up to
ten percent of a franchise. Valuations are expected to approach the ten billion dollar mark in the coming years, but the Hunt family's portfolio includes much more than just pro football. Dan Hunt, who is nearly ten years Clark's junior, is president of Major League Soccer's FC Dallas, and he played a crucial role in ensuring that fifteen matches in the twenty two twenty six feet of World Cup, including the semifinal, would be played in stadiums in Dallas and Kansas City.
But perhaps their biggest success in the last year was outside their control. Here's Randall Williams, who covers the business of Sports for Bloomberg.
Clark and Dan laughed when they said, like, it was a year unlike any other, and not because we won the Super Bowl.
It was because Chiefs tight end Travis Kelcey started dating Taylor Swift, and that attracted hundreds of thousands of new fans, so many, in fact, that a new category of memes took off many. Swifty suggested the world had only taken notice of Kelsey's talent on the grid iron because of Swift.
Do you know how many people are going to start watching football now because of her?
Like, nobody knew who Travis Kelsey was until he started dating Taylor Swift. Keep boy, Travis Kelcey became famous over night.
Isn't it crazy how Jaylor Swift put that one football guy.
Like on the map became a pop culture phenomenon and a huge win for the Hunt brother.
They said that she helped grow their fan base by thirty percent, and that was a metric that the NFL used in terms of how they measure a fan base's growth. But at thirty percent, that is insane year over year growth.
Randall recently sat down with Clark and Dan Hunt in Texas.
It's the only wooden office. I've seen on like a thirtieth floor. I don't know if that was the official floor, but I mean just a lot of wood, a lot of antique stuff.
The Hunt brothers rarely give interviews, but they spoke to Randall along with Bloomberg's Julie Fine and Jason Kelly today on the show The Billionaire Hunt Brothers in their own words, how the family took an oil fortune and used that to build a sports empire, and their goals for the future to make American football into a sport that's truly global, and to accelerate interest in the US in the other kind of football. From Bloomberg News, this is the big take. I'm David Gerret.
Two completely different characters, but they work things out. I don't have a direct comparison. I don't know if it's Superman and Batman or a dynamic duo that's out there that describes him. I've had to think on it a little bit longer, but they are a dynamic duo.
Bloomberg's Randall Williams says Clark and Dan Hunt's success didn't come out of nowhere. The brothers went into the family business, following in their dad Lamar's footsteps.
Lamar got into sports, so he was a part of the AFL, and then when the AFL and NFL merged, of course he maintained his ownership of the Kansas City Chiefs. He eventually took a stake in the Chicago Bulls as well. He was early in on soccer, so he's a pioneer in the sports world. But I don't think that he touted his accomplishments the same way that other sports owners who are flamboyant have.
But to hear Dan Hunt tell it, their mom played just as big a role in the Hunt family success.
And our parents were unbelievable examples and of working together. I always argue that my dad would not or our dad would not have had the success he had without our mother's support. We saw how they worked together, and we worked together in the same way.
With Stakes and the Chiefs, the Bulls and earlier US professional soccer leagues. Lamar and Norma emphasized the importance of having a diverse portfolio, and their sons took that to heart. Now they're looking to the future. Recently, Clark helmden NFL committee studying the role of private equity in the NFL, which is something my co host Sarah Holder talked about
with Randall back in February. The NFL had been hesitant to allow institutional investment, but the league just changed the rules and this season will be the first time it'll allow private equity investors to own up to ten percent of a franchise.
They'd been studying it for five years, and naturally after two different transactions happened with the Denver Broncos where that team sold for four point sixty five billion dollars and then less than two years later, Josh Harris buys the Commander for six bis million dollars, and Josh Harris he said it was a difficult thing for him to raise
that much money. An NFL owner has to have at least thirty percent of the team, and so for future NFL franchises, if the valuations are jumping from four point sixty five billion to six billion every single transaction's and that may not happen every single time, but if they're going up five hundred million, seven hundred million for every single one that happens in the future, it raised a concern of if these things are too big to sell, and so private equity can help with this, but they
don't want them to run the entire team. So these are silent shareholders, is what I would call them.
I asked Randall if the Chiefs are hoping to attract new outside money. The franchise is currently owned by Clark, Dan and their two half siblings.
I'm asking them this a number of times because the Chiefs have a stadium renovation that they got denied for earlier this year. The Hunt family would have put three hundred million. They asked this city of Kansas City essentially for five hundred million, and Kansas City denied them. If you sell, If the Kansas City's Chiefs sold a piece of themselves to a private equity firm, they'd be able to pay for their renovation. Clark has told me multiple times.
I probably asked them three times this year, in March, in May, and now in August. Would you be open to selling a private equity He said no, So that's not on the table for them right now. He didn't rule it out down the line, but it's not of immediate interest to the Hunt family right now.
Selling a piece of their iconic NFL team may not be of interest to the Clarks at the moment, but they do have several high profile goals. The first is to make American football more popular in Europe and South America, and the second is to crack the code on making soccer a bigger deal and a bigger profit center in
the US. That's after the break. The NFL has the highest revenue of any single sports league in the world, not just in the US, and as the value of teams continues to balloon, the league is facing a kind of existential question. How much more can the NFL grow domestically. Bloomberg's Randall Williams says that at some point the league will have to find new fans elsewhere if they want to rake in Euros and Rayal's.
The next place they have to conquer is international waters international countries, because it's the biggest domestic sport in comparison to soccer and basketball globally. The NFL isn't in the same ballpark just yet. That's why Brazil's happening this year, Spain next year, who knows where they go next.
This week, the Green Bay Packers will take on the Philadelphia Eagles, not at lambeau Field or the Link, but in South Paolo. While games like this one played overseas have been well attended. They're one offs. The NFL has previously tried and failed to capture the European market with a spinoff league called NFL Europe. It lasted for about sixteen years until it closed down in two thousand and seven. Here's Clark Hunt.
Yeah, we're going back to the nineties. Our father was very much interested in the growth of the NFL internationally, and he always insisted on the Chiefs playing preseason games. We played in Japan, a couple of times, we played in Bertlin, and then when the league changed their approach to playing regular season games, we were one of the first teams that raised our hands because we recognized the value of growing the Chiefs brand on an international basis.
As Randall mentioned, soccer is still king in Europe, in South America, and pretty much everywhere outside the US, but Dan Hunt believes that the twenty twenty six feet of World Cup will be a unique moment to bring in new fans in the United States. Forty eight teams are going to compete in matches across Mexico, the US, and Canada.
The World Cup in twenty twenty six. These next two international or worldwide sporting events. In the World Cup and in the LA twenty eight Olympics are huge moments for soccer. I mean, you're going to have every star in the world on the male side. It's going to be here in twenty twenty six, and that's an opportunity for US fans or United States citizens to really see the rabid
fandom of soccer. I think that there is rabbit fandoms in pockets across the nation, but it is nothing like the worldwide, global fandom of soccer.
Dan Hunt is all in on the one two punch of the World Cup and the twenty twenty eight LA Olympics. He thinks those two events will be the breakthrough soccer needs to become a real rival to American football, basketball, and baseball in the US.
We're going to have one hundred and four matches, forty eight teams, the largest and grandest scale of all and now playing so many matches in these NFL stadiums. They generate revenue like no other stadium in the entire world.
I asked Randall, why the Clark brothers think this decade, this moment is different. I mean, there have been countless failed attempts to get soccer to catch on in the States.
The reason the twenty twenty six World Cup is such a huge moment is because you don't know when the World Cup is going to be back in the States. This is the biggest sporting event in the world. And when you're talking about global stars Leonnel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Killian and Bape like, all of these stars are going to be here, and with that, you're going to be to see Team USA as the underdogs. And we all
know how much America loves an underdog story. And when the World Cup has played in other countries, it's fun to tune in, but it's not the same for the US audience if you have to get up at three or four am. But if all the games are happening across the coast and it's all everyone's talking about all the time, this is your moment.
There was one other thing Randall wanted to ask the Hunt brothers about as they look to the future, how they're thinking about what will happen with the next generation.
I don't know the Hunt's succession plan. Clark Hunt has three children, Dan Hunt has two. I think that those five are the next generation. But Clark also is the
second youngest NFL owner. I believe behind the forty nine ers, their children will be prepped over time and be prepared the same way that he was, because that's the thing that both he and Dan have said over and over and over again, is that their mom and dad were great teachers, great mentors, and they provided a lot of knowledge so that when it was time to pass this down from one generation to the next, that they could a exist cohesively and be run the business the way that it should be run.
The brothers live down the street from each other and are raising their families to be close.
The fact that they're as tight as they are, and if you're growing up next to one another, God willing it all works.
Up, which may be just what the Hunt brothers are banking on. This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gerrat. This episode was produced by Alex Sekura. It was edited by Brendan Walsh and Naomi Shaven. She and Kim Gittleson are our senior producers. Episode was mixed by Blake Maples. It was fact checked by Adriana Tapia. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso Nicole Beemster Bor is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is head of Podcasts.
If you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show. Thanks for listening, We'll be back tomorrow