At this week’s NFL owners meeting, stake sales at two of the American football league’s 32 major franchises were confirmed, expanding the range of ownership and the influence of private equity on the competition.
Haslam Sports Group, owner of the Cleveland Browns, has sold a minority stake in the team to private equity firm Arctos Capital Partners.
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Arctos will take a total 10% stake in the franchise, split across three investment tranches, with this first approved agreement seeing the firm claim a preliminary 3% stake.
The overall agreement reportedly values the browns at $9 billion, meaning Arctos will pay $900 million, one of the highest NFL franchise valuations ever, and far in excess of the $6.4 billion that Forbes valued the team as in August 2025.
Much of this valuation likely stems from the franchise’s new stadium project, known as Huntington Bank Field, which is set to open in 2029.
Similarly, much of the funding will also be directed toward that stadium, which will cost $2.4 billion, of which the Browns will privately fund at least 67.5%.
The 32 NFL franchise owners voted to approve limited private equity investment at a special owners' meeting in August 2024.
The equity funds are limited to a maximum of 10% investment in any franchise. Other restrictions include only being able to invest in a maximum of six different teams, and no franchise being permitted to sell off more than 20% in total to private equity.
Only a limited number of funds were approved in this fashion, of which Arctos is one, and the firm has been the most expansive since the ruling, as the only private equity firm as yet to invest in multiple teams.
Arctos also owns 10% of the Buffalo Bills, and 8% of the Los Angeles Chargers, and it is clear that the firm’s aggressive acquisition strategy remains unabated despite its own recent purchase by KKR.
Elsewhere in the NFL, the Las Vegas Raiders have also sourced a number of new owners, with a range of prominent US businesspeople acquiring minority stakes in the team.
Perhaps the most prominent of these are Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro, the chief executive and chief operating officer, respectively, of the multi-sport and business conglomerate TKO Group, who have each acquired stakes of less than 10% previously held by minority shareholder First Football.
First Football, a consortium that first invested in the team in 2007, has completely divested from the franchise, selling 1.4% to Emanuel and 0.6% to Shapiro.
The consortium also sold a 5.3% stake in the franchise to Michael Dell, who founded the tech firm that bears his surname, and 1.7% to Joseph Baratta, who serves as the head of global private equity strategies at private equity fund Blackstone.
First Football rounded out its Raiders divestment with the sale of 11% to Silver Lake managing partner and chief executive Egon Durban, and 5.4% to real estate developer Michael Meldman.
Durban, who has first refusal on Raiders controlling owner Mark Davis’ 36% stake should he decide to sell up, now holds 22% of the team overall, and Meldman owns 12.9%.
First Football’s divestment has reportedly valued the franchise at $9.9 billion, a premium on the $7.7 billion that Forbes valued the franchise at in 2025.
