Yankees receiving $2.6 billion in deal with Apollo Sports Capital
Yankees managing partner Hal Steinbrenner in 2025. Credit: Newsday/Thomas A. Ferrara
Yankee Global Enterprises is receiving $2.6 billion in an agreement with Apollo Sports Capital to help refinance existing debt and allow the Yankees to pursue growth opportunities.
The deal is expected to close soon, according to the news release announcing the deal.
The Steinbrenner family will continue to have full control of the Yankees, and Hal Steinbrenner will remain as the managing general partner.
“We welcome Apollo to the Yankees family,” Steinbrenner said in a statement. “We are continually seeking ways to strengthen our positioning, and this partnership allows us to explore pursuing strategic opportunities. We look forward to a successful working relationship.”
Apollo Sports Capital CEO Al Tylis will join the board of Yankee Global Enterprises, the holding company of the Yankees, which also holds stakes in the YES Network, Legends Hospitality, Major League Soccer’s New York City FC and Italy’s AC Milan. Apollo is a high-growth, global alternative asset manager that became the largest shareholder in Spanish soccer club Atletico de Madrid in March.
Experts say the agreement continues a trend of private equity investment in sports teams.
“It’s an infusion of capital into what is essentially a family business,” said Mark Conrad, a professor of law and ethics at Fordham University's Gabelli School of Business and the director of the school’s sports business concentration. “As team owners want to invest in their teams more and invest in other properties, the use of private equity funds is an attractive way to do that.”
The Yankees are the most valuable franchise in Major League Baseball, with an estimated $8.5 billion valuation, according to Forbes’ most recent list.
MLB limits individual private equity funds to a 15% ownership stake in a team. Any equity portion Apollo may hold in the Yankees was not disclosed.
It was unclear how the agreement will specifically benefit the Yankees. Conrad and Robert Boland, a professor of sports law at Seton Hall Law School who has worked on franchise transactions in the past, expect the deal to help the Yankees pay off debt from the construction of Yankee Stadium. Boland sees it as an avenue for the franchise to be more aggressive in contract talks with players.
“The Yankees taking this injection of cash is certainly advantageous for the Steinbrenners," Boland said. "It’s advantageous for the franchise and it keeps them competitive with their principal economic competitors like Steve Cohen and the Guggenheim group that owns the Dodgers. In terms of their ability to spend with the Dodgers, this puts them in a much more advantageous position… It will allow them to be more competitive in contracts that don’t demand any deferrals.”
Conrad noted the impending negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement following the current deal’s expiration in December. Depending on how MLB’s spending rules change following those talks, Conrad thinks the Yankees might look at more imaginative ways to spend money.
“I could see a Yankees cruise, I could see Yankees-oriented recreational areas,” Conrad said. “Internationally, I think there are investments in certain virgin territories they could look at, whether that’s international baseball or other sports like soccer. Sports is an entertainment business and a media business, so I think there are other possibilities to look at.”
Both Boland and Conrad expect to see more transactions between professional sports teams and private equity firms.
“Almost everybody in private equity is seeing sports as the frontier opportunity that they want to be involved in,” Boland said. “This is a moment when owners are trying to capitalize on the private capital interest that is going into this.”
Boland suggested that the agreement could result in the fan experience becoming more costly.
“From the business side, it looks like a win-win,” Conrad said. “Will the fans win? I don’t know.”
Matt Lindsay is a high school sports reporter who joined Newsday in 2022 after graduating from Stony Brook University.
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