Tilman Fertitta is the newest owner of the Houston Rockets. The Houston-based casino owner will buy the Rockets for more than $2 billion according to multiple reports that broke Tuesday morning.
Fertitta is the owner of the Landry’s restaurant empire and also owns the Golden Nugget casino brand. The billionaire has dabbled in sports before, helping bring the NFL back to Houston with the Texans. He also served as director of the Rockets during the 1990s.
The Rockets went up for sale back in July and Alexander has now sold the team, a week after donating $10 million to Hurricane Harvey relief efforts. It was a huge charitable move made for a city in crisis as it looks to recover from the devastating flooding. Fox’s Mark Berman first reported the sale to Fertitta, but ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski had the price point, which is the largest for an NBA team in history.
Sources: Leslie Alexander has agreed to a deal to sell team to Houston billionaire Tilman Fertitta for NBA record sales price of $2.2B.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) September 5, 2017
Fertitta took to Twitter himself on Tuesday to post a message with the Rockets logo attached, confirming the purchase himself.
It is an honor to be a part of the @NBA. I look forward to serving the city of #Houston and continuing the success of @HoustonRockets. pic.twitter.com/1RE6vbj8j1
— Tilman Fertitta (@TilmanJFertitta) September 5, 2017
“It is an honor to be a part of the @NBA,” Fertitta wrote. “I look forward to serving the city of #Houston and continuing the success of @HoustonRockets.”
The Rockets aren’t even in the top 5 of Forbes’ list of most valuable franchises, but valuation isn’t alway equal to sale price when it comes to buying teams. The Buffalo Bills, for example, are one of the least valuable NFL franchises but sold to billionaire Terry Pegula for more than $1.5 billion though the franchise was worth less than a billion. The $2.2 billion price tag is over half a billion more than the $1.65 billion the Rockets were valued at back in February.
Buying sports teams isn’t about how much a franchise is worth now, however, but how much they will make in the future. It’s a bet that the league and the team will continue to grow, and these kind of bets rarely fail to pay out.
