Who is Josh Harris? The Sixers managing partner is part of a reported deal to buy the Washington Commanders.
Harris, 57, grew up in Maryland and is a Wharton grad. His private equity career made him wealthy, but he's best known for acquiring sports teams including the Sixers and the New Jersey Devils.
Sixers managing partner Josh Harris is leading a group that reached a $6.05 billion agreement to buy the Washington Commanders football team, news outlets reported Thursday.
The deal comes after rumors of a sale to Harris swirled for weeks.
Dan Snyder has owned Washington’s National Football League franchise since 1999 and began exploring a sale in November.
Who is Josh Harris?
Harris, 58, grew up in Maryland and graduated from Penn’s Wharton School in 1986. He then worked researching mergers for the junk-bond financing shop headed by another Wharton graduate, Michael Milken. Harris left two years later and got his MBA from Harvard in 1988, a year before Milken’s arrest on charges of racketeering and insider trading. (Milken was convicted and jailed, but later pardoned by then-President Donald Trump.)
Harris then joined a group of Milken ex-lieutenants, led by his former mergers supervisor, Leon Black, in founding Apollo Global Management, a Wall Street firm that invests half a trillion dollars for clients.
By mid-2021, Harris owned 20% of Apollo, worth more than $2 billion. He also owned extensive private investments, such as the Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress, which he and a group of smaller investors sold last year.
That year, Harris pushed his longtime boss, Leon Black, to leave the company after revelations that Black had paid convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein more than $150 million for what Black characterized as financial advice, according to news reports.
When Black left, Harris briefly took over as Apollo’s CEO but stepped down two months later, under pressure from Black’s remaining allies at the firm, according to financial media reports.
He began selling his Apollo stock and owned less than 5% when the company reported its major owners to investors this past spring. Last year, Harris bought a Miami estate for a reported $32 million. He has shown a continuing interest in acquiring more pro sports teams, though he was outbid for the Denver Broncos in June by a $4.5 billion deal from an heir to the Walmart fortune.
Harris’ history with sports teams
Most of Harris’ $5.8 billion fortune comes from his private equity career, but he’s best known as an acquirer of sports teams — heading the group that bought the Sixers in 2011 from Comcast Spectacor for $280 million.
Harris and comanaging partner David Blitzer bought the New Jersey Devils hockey team for a reported $300 million-plus the next year. The pair in 2015 became part of the majority ownership group in the U.K. Premier League’s Crystal Palace soccer club. Their company, Harris Blitzer Sports Entertainment, also owns farm teams, sport tech investments, and other ventures.