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Highlights:
This may explain why every pro athlete seems to have their own foundation…
“A group of U.S. investors made an offer to UniCredit SpA, co-owner of AS Roma, to acquire the three-time Italian soccer champion.
They are proposing to pay as much as 130 million euros ($178 million) and are seeking a 50 million-euro credit line for AS Roma from UniCredit after the purchase, Italian newspaper Il Messaggero reported Jan. 28. Movsesian declined to provide details of the offer.
He said it would be “an honor” to buy the team, and revealed it would be “trophy asset” as well as an investment.”
Do you know how much return you could get on a soccer team? Is buying a team more or less risky than buying a stock?
“The trustee representing the victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from the owners of the Mets, alleging that they, as longtime and successful investors, knew or should have known Madoff was operating a fraud, according to two lawyers involved in the case.”
Practice in new climates isn’t the only reason teams are playing in distant locales.
“This is the new landscape of international football. Friendly games used to be a chance to try out new players or different formations. Nowadays they’re about making money, which means going wherever you’ll get the biggest audience.” – Tony Cottee, Football Analyst and Former Player for the England National Team
Financial institutions are forming increasingly tight and profitable relationships with athletic organizations like sports teams – melding finance and sports and showing how finance intersects with many different aspects of modern life.
“What people don’t see is how we’re using the Olympic access for our training and development. This is timely. If ever Lloyds needed Olympians, it is now.” — Sally Hancock, Director of Group Sponsorship at Lloyd Banking Group
Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps, Mia Hamm, and seemingly every other big athlete out there has their own charitable foundation. There are many reasons why an athlete might open his own foundation, which are really no different than the reasons a normal person would have for starting a foundation. Starting a foundation allows you to determine its mission – what causes it plans to address and how it will go about doing that. Mia Hamm’s foundation focuses on two causes very close to her, young women in sports and transplant patients – her brother Garrow died from complications from a transplant. A lot of athletes’ foundations have something to do with the sport in which they excel or with another cause otherwise meaningful to them.
Also, having a foundation is good PR. Running a foundation that does charitable work makes you look like a good person and therefore, more marketable for a larger number of companies. This can be good for endorsement deals and generally adding to your fame. That isn’t to say that athletes are bad for being famous and starting foundations at all – their fame can bring lots of attention to issues that might otherwise be overlooked. Although not an athlete, Farrah Fawcett’s advocacy and unfortunate death brought lots of attention to a little-discussed form of cancer.
Some think it would be better to give to a pre-existing foundation than starting your own. Michael Jordan closed down the Michael Jordan Foundation because he wanted to focus on the James Jordan Foundation, started in honor of his father. He noted that they did similar things and he wanted to be able to concentrate his energy and money in one place to enhance his impact.
Starting a foundation allows athletes and other people with money and influence to direct their giving precisely as they choose. They should be commended for lending their name and their money to causes that need support, and so should you for giving to good causes.