Report: Suns part-owner Justin Ishbia considering bid to buy Twins

Phil Miller and Bobby Nightengale, Star Tribune on Dec 13, 2024

Published in Baseball

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MINNEAPOLIS — Two months after the Minnesota Twins were put up for sale, the first potential buyer has been identified. And he’s an increasingly familiar face in professional sports.

Phoenix Suns part-owner Justin Ishbia, the billionaire founder and managing partner of Shore Capital Partners, a private equity firm in Chicago, is considering adding Minnesota’s oldest major league sports team to his portfolio, according to a report Friday from Bloomberg News.

Ishbia, 47, is studying the Twins and the Twin Cities community, the report said, in hopes of expanding his sports holdings, which already include — along with his brother, Mat — the Suns, the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and, as a minority partner, MLS’ Nashville Soccer Club. According to Bloomberg, Justin Ishbia has publicly acknowledged that one of his goals is to own a major league baseball team.

The Ishbia brothers, worth an estimated $15 billion combined, according to Forbes, paid former Suns owner Robert Sarver a record $4 billion to buy the Suns and Mercury in 2023. That’s 10 times as much as the estimated $400 million Sarver paid for the basketball teams in 2004.

And the family of Carl Pohlad, a banker who purchased the Twins in 1984 for roughly $44 million, is expecting an even larger return: The Twins are valued, according to Forbes magazine, at about $1.5 billion, or 34 times what Pohlad paid four decades ago.

The premium paid for the Suns hasn’t kept the Ishbias from investing in the team’s roster. The Suns have a payroll of $216 million, highest in the NBA, as measured by the salary-tracking website Spotrac.com. Three Suns players — Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal — will earn at least $49 million this year, each among the 15 highest salaries in the league.

The Twins, by contrast, ranked 19th in MLB last season with a payroll of about $130 million, or $25 million less than the previous season. They have only one player, Carlos Correa, 11th at $33 million, among baseball’s top-40 salaries and are expected to keep the payroll at the same level in 2025.

The Pohlads — the three sons and eight grandchildren of Carl Pohlad, who died in 2009 — announced in October that the team was for sale, a surprise move after Joe Pohlad, the team’s executive chair, said in January that the family had no plans to sell. Only the Yankees, owned by the Steinbrenner family, and the White Sox, owned by Jerry Reinsdorf, have had the same ownership longer than the Twins.

No interested buyers had emerged publicly in the two months since the family’s announcement, and Twins President Derek Falvey said earlier this week that the sale is in “phase one, which is gathering a ton of information.”

Ishbia grew up in Michigan before attending Michigan State, where his brother played on the Spartans’ 2000 NCAA basketball championship team. In September, Justin Ishbia gifted the university $10 million for the men’s basketball program and upgrades to the Spartans’ baseball facility. The university plans to rename that stadium Jeff Ishbia Field, in honor of Justin’s father, who founded United Wholesale Mortgage in 1986.