- At an event in Manhattan on Tuesday night, Avenue Capital founder Marc Lasry discussed his purchase of the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks, which he made six years ago with fellow billionaire Wes Edens.
- The investment has soared thanks to new media deals between the league and its broadcast partners, but Lasry thinks it still has room to grow.
- He said the demand for live sports is unique among all other entertainment options.
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Billionaire Marc Lasry said he thought he was going to be a professional basketball player when he was a kid.
While he played in college for one season at Clark University in Massachusetts, the founder of Avenue Capital ended up going to law school and then making billions of dollars as an investor.
But he found his way back to the game when he and fellow billionaire Wes Edens bought the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks in 2014 for $550 million (fellow hedge-fund billionaire Jamie Dinan is now a co-owner as well).
His love for basketball didn't stop him from evaluating the company like any other asset though, he told attendees at an event in midtown Manhattan on Tuesday night.
"When I bought it, I thought we were buying a media company," he said, because the league's agreements with its broadcast partners were set to renegotiated. Now, the basketball team is estimated to be worth more than $1.3 billion, and recent purchases by Steve Ballmer and Tilman Fertitta of the Los Angeles Clippers and Houston Rockets, respectively, were over $2 billion.
"I think it's been the best investment I've ever made," said Lasry, who used his newfound clout in the league to play in the 2016 celeb game that is a part of the All-Star Game festivities. Lasry expects the league and its franchises to continue to grow in value thanks to the demand for live sports.
He mentioned how companies like Facebook and Twitter were looking for events that people wanted to watch live.
"Everyone wants an asset that today gives you something live," he said.
The team has done well under Lasry, advancing to the conference championship last year before falling to the Toronto Raptors. He said he and the other owners take a financier approach to managing the team, which can occasionally irk the basketball operations staff.
For example, when the team wants to play one player $20 million a year, and another $2 million a year, Lasry said he asks if the first player is ten times better since that's what their salaries suggest - something that gets shut down by the team's management.
"The amount of time we spend going through on value makes the basketball people very upset," he said.
He also compared building a team at Avenue or any finance company to the work of building a basketball team, saying there's also a question of whether to value character or talent more.
"We'd rather have character," he said, telling the audience that each player on the team is "a great individual."
He said he doesn't see himself selling anytime soon, despite the return the team has generated for him so far - maybe one example of how this investment is different than others he'd make.
"It's been a blast."