Sports team owners top hedge fund earnings list

A pair of sports team owners have topped Bloomberg’s list of the ten highest-earning hedge fund managers of 2025.

Taking the top spot is New York Mets (MLB) owner Steve Cohen, who earned $3.4 billion last year as the CEO of Point72. Point72 Asset Management became an SEC-registered investment adviser in 2018, the same year Cohen’s ban on managing outside capital expired after the SEC punished him on charges tied to employee insider trading at his former hedge fund, S.A.C. Capital Advisors. 

Appaloosa Management hedge fund founder and president David Tepper ranks second on Bloomberg’s list behind Cohen. Tepper, who owns the NFL’s Carolina Panthers, earned $3.2 billion last year. The number three through eight spots on Bloomberg’s list of top hedge fund earners are ranked in order as: Millennium’s Izzy Englander, TCI’s Chris Hohn, Citadel’s Ken Griffin, D1 Capital’s Dan Sundheim, D.E. Shaw’s David Shaw, Element’s Jeff Talpins, Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman, and Chris Rokos of Rokos Capital Management.

The convergence between sports investing and Wall Street has accelerated over the past few years as private equity became permitted to own minority stakes in teams across the MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLS. Private equity giant KKR struck a $1.4 billion deal earlier this month to buy leading sports team investor Arctos, signaling KKR’s plans to bring the sports asset class to high-net-worth and mass-affluent investors. 

“We work with a number of firms that are doing sports investing. Our families are typically not directly investing in sports teams, but there are a number of funds out there that give our clients access to a diversified pool of sports teams,” Andrew Cooper, co-head of family office at the New York-based RIA Cerity Partners told InvestmentNews. 

“You can invest in a fund that's going to invest in one NFL team, one Women's Soccer League team, one European soccer league team. And I think in some ways, that provides clients diversification on the teams that they're investing in,” added Cooper.

Peter Mallouk, a signature figure of the RIA industry given his time leading Creative Planning into one of the largest aggregator firms, is also upping his sports ownership portfolio. Mallouk became a minority investor in MLB’s Kansas City Royals in 2019, and more recently became the majority owner of Sporting Kansas City in Major League Soccer as of January. 

Fellow RIA industry leader Shirl Penney of Dynasty Financial Partners revealed to InvestmentNews in November that his firm supported a bid led by Alex Rodrigues and Jennifer Lopez to buy the Mets in 2020 before the ballclub was sold to Cohen for $2.4 billion.