Feb
10
Roush Racing to Sell 50% Stake to Fenway Sports Group
February 10, 2007 | Posted by VroomDude
It looks like a done deal, with Jack Roush selling a 50% stake in Roush Racing to a group of investors led by Boston Red Sox owner John Henry:
A group of investors led by Boston Red Sox owner John Henry has completed a deal to buy a 50 percent stake in the Roush Racing NASCAR team, a person familiar with the negotiations said Friday.
Although team owner Jack Roush is selling half of the team to the Fenway Sports Group, Roush will continue to run the team’s competitive operations, according to the person, who requested anonymity because the deal hasn’t been announced.
Both parties have scheduled a Feb. 14 news conference at Jackie Robinson Ballpark, a minor league facility near Daytona International Speedway.
No word yet on exactly how much Jack got for the 50% stake, but I imagine it’s a goodly sum. As far as the potential fallout from the deal, I doubt it’ll have much immediate impact on the operations or on-track performance of the Rousch cars, as Henry appears content to let Jack continue to run the show (although ol’ Jack will have to find something new to whine about now, as far as not having enough money to both develop a competitive Car of Tomorrow program as well as compete with Toyota and its free-spending ways).
In the long run, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more deals like this happen. It’s becoming more and more common for owners of professional sports franchises to expand their empires into other adjacent sports (with owners and/or investor groups owning MLB, NFL, NBA, and/or NHL teams, in various combinations), and there’s no reason to think that NASCAR would be immune to that.
At a certain scale, professional sports conglomerates start to more closely resemble a media provider more than anything else, and the easiest way for them to increase their profits is to keep expanding outward, bringing to bear their marketing clout to bear in as many arenas as possible.