Not long ago, billionaire Todd Boehly voiced his mantra. “If I said I was going to do it, I’d get it done,” he said. “And when you have a reputation for being able to get stuff done, it’s amazing what more stuff ends up piling up in your inbox.”
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That vast and growing inbox is better known as Eldridge Industries, the private investment firm that Boehly co-founded in 2015 and that currently owns stakes in more than 100 finance, media, sports, real estate and tech companies. They include Bruce Springsteen’s song rights, sports-betting firm DraftKings, the Los Angeles Dodgers, Lakers and Sparks, as well as the Beverly Hilton, indie studio A24 and Penske Media (the latter’s assets include the Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Rolling Stone and Dick Clark Productions). In 2022, Boehly led a consortium to buy English Premier football team Chelsea FC from Russian owner Roman Abramovich for a record 4.25 billion pounds, or roughly $5.4 billion.
In short, in today’s fragmented media and entertainment landscape, Boehly’s influence extends to a great deal of the content produced, the means to churn out that content, the mechanisms that cover said content and the organizations that bestow awards upon all of it.
Although the former All-American wrestler at William & Mary — who initially considered being a doctor or an engineer — insists that he’s never had a “master plan,” his rise to prominence has been driven, in part, by some game-changing thinking.
An early Eldridge tech investment was in Replay Technologies, a 360-degree sports replay platform that placed multiple cameras around home plate at Dodger Stadium to fully immerse viewers in the game. In 2016, Intel bought Replay, and the technology is now used by virtually every sports team in their broadcasts. (In 2021, Intel shuttered its sports division, which had been created in the wake of the Replay purchase.)
Boehly, 50, further transformed the sports entertainment landscape when, in 2014, he led the $8.35-billion deal between Time Warner Cable and the Dodgers to create SportsNet LA, a regional network that carries all Dodgers games and all Dodgers-related programming. While the venture has had some well-publicized pain points over distribution issues, it has helped fund a team payroll that has consistently been among Major League Baseball’s highest.
Boehly’s Midas touch has not gone untested. Last season, the first since he bought Chelsea, the team finished a dismal 12th in the Premier League and placed sixth this year. Further, the embattled Golden Globes, which he acquired last year, has yet to completely shake off its scandal-plagued reputation. Its longtime broadcast network, NBC, ended its partnership after giving the Globes a one-year reprieve (CBS aired the 2024 show and pulled in 9.4 million viewers, up 50% from last year, but received dismal reviews) — proving that both power and influence have limits.
