Jeff Bezos is reportedly keen on buying an NFL team
- Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is reportedly interested in buying an NFL team.
- A report from CBS Sports published on Sunday cites league sources who say that Bezos is "close with several current league owners," though the report did not cite the names of any specific teams Bezos may be talking to.
- Were Bezos to buy an NFL team, the purchase would only expand his already-extensive range of business interests in fields ranging from journalism to space exploration.
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Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is reportedly interested in buying an NFL team.
According to CBS Sports, unnamed league sources say Bezos is "close with several current league owners," though CBS did not cite the names of any specific teams Bezos may be interested in.
CBS Sports noted that buying an NFL team would be pretty affordable for Bezos, who is the world's richest person. The publication added that there are no teams currently on the market - although the Seattle Seahawks may be put up for the sale after the death of their owner, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, in 2018.
Were Bezos to buy an NFL team down the line, the purchase would only expand his already extensive range of business interests beyond Amazon in fields ranging from journalism to space exploration.
Arguably the best-known of Bezos's business interests away from Amazon is his ownership of The Washington Post newspaper, which he bought in 2013 for for $250 million. That acquisition has prompted scrutiny from US president Donald Trump, who often refers to the newspaper as "The Amazon Washington Post" in tweets, and last month instructed US federal agencies to cancel their Washington Post subscriptions.
He is also interested in space exploration. In 2000 he founded Blue Origin, an aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight services firm. With a view to eventually selling commercial space flights, Blue Origin develops and tests suborbital rockets, arguably the best-known of which is called 'New Shepherd.'
Though affordable space travel is near-constantly talked of as being imminent, it doesn't look like Blue Origin's spaceflight will be affordable any time soon. Last month, Blue Origin's CEO Bob Smith said the first space trips on New Shepherd will cost "hundreds of thousands of dollars, initially."
Jeff Bezos has said he liquidates $1 billion of Amazon stock every year to fund Blue Origin.
Bezos is known, too, for his philanthropic commitments. Notably, he has given roughly $100 million to anti-homelessness charities and allows those charities to control how the funds are spent.
Of course, such a broad range of ventures would not be possible - or at least much less feasible - without the aid of Bezos's vast personal capital.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranks him as the world's richest person, with a total net worth of $111 billion as of Monday. To put the scale of his wealth into context, Bezos is still the richest person on the planet despite being the only one of the world's top 20 tech billionaires to lose money in the past 12 months: a roughly $15 billion loss largely caused by his megabucks divorce from MacKenzie Bezos in July.