Steve Cohen Battles Pizza Magnate for Title of Richest Baseball Owner

(Bloomberg) -- Steve Cohen has finally snagged the New York Mets for a reported $2.42 billion.

The culmination of his long courtship to secure the franchise has Mets fans rejoicing and looking forward to having an ownership group that’s willing to spend big to bring a World Series back to Queens for the first time since 1986.

But a rich owner isn’t a guarantee of success in baseball.

Cohen will join the Detroit Tigers’ Marian Ilitch as the richest owner in Major League Baseball. Each are worth $10.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Ilitch, who co-founded Little Caesars pizza chain with her late husband Mike Ilitch, has seen her wealth grow by $1.3 billion in 2020 as demand for delivery food has surged during the global Covid-19 pandemic. Despite her wealth, Ilitch’s Tigers haven’t won a championship since 1984, when the team was owned by another pizza impresario, Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan.

Cohen and Ilitch are each worth more than double the next richest baseball owner, the Washington National’s Ted Lerner.

Lerner’s Nationals were able to secure a championship in 2019, but the use of deferred contracts for stars like Max Scherzer means the team will be paying for that title though the end of the decade.

Cohen, founder of hedge fund firm Point 72 Asset Management, is hardly the richest owner in U.S. pro sports. That title goes to Steve Ballmer, who owns the National Basketball Association’s Los Angeles Clippers. The former chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp. is the eighth-richest person in the world with a net worth of $74.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg index. The Clippers have never won an NBA title.

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