Meet Todd Boehly, Hollywood-Connected Billionaire Bidding for Denver Broncos

Three of the five groups that have reportedly submitted initial bids for the Denver Broncos, which officially went on the block February 1, have been publicly identified: Walmart heir Rob Walton, Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils co-owner Josh Harris, and Todd Boehly, an investor in the Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Lakers.

But there's a lot more to Boehly than his connection to this pair of iconic L.A. sports franchises. He's currently involved in two other major projects: an effort to take over Chelsea F.C., one of the planet's most famous soccer squads, and an attempt to turn the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the controversial outfit behind the Golden Globes, into an updated enterprise essentially run by him.

According to Forbes, Boehly's net worth as of April 20 was $4.5 billion, much less than Walton's estimated $70 billion, and also lower than Harris's $5.7 billion. He lands at number 647 on the magazine's list of the planet's wealthiest billionaires and didn't appear in the most recent edition of the Forbes 400. But if Boehly, who's in his late forties, can't quite measure up to other bidders when it comes to the height of cash stacks, he's capable of making up the difference through wile and aggressiveness.

Like Harris, Boehly wrestled in his youth. His team at the Landon School in Bethesda, Maryland, won championships in 1990 and 1991 — achievements that were celebrated in 2014 by the christening of the Boehly Family Wrestling Room at the facility. He subsequently attended and graduated from the College of William & Mary, where he met his wife, Katie. That institution has also benefited from the couple's philanthropy: Their gifts funded what is now known as the Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance, and they served as honorary co-chairs of a $55 million campaign to finance athletic programs at the university last year.

Professionally, Boehly climbed assorted ladders at Credit Suisse First Boston and J.H. Whitney & Company before joining Guggenheim Partners in 2001 — and he was deeply involved with what became known as the Guggenheim Baseball Management Group when it purchased the Dodgers a decade ago. In 2018, a class-action lawsuit made claims of impropriety about the transaction, charging that "the alleged scheme included how Guggenheim, [CEO Mark] Walter, then-Guggenheim president Todd Boehly and Texas oil tycoon Robert 'Bobby' Patton Jr used...insurers as a 'cash machine' to fund the $2.15 billion Dodgers purchase in 2012." The suit was withdrawn the next year, however.

At this point, Boehly isn't directly associated with Guggenheim Partners. In 2015, he founded Eldridge, which "manages businesses across diversified industries" and is "interested in providing businesses and management teams with capital and resources to help experienced leaders and their teams execute their strategic plans," according to its website. Four years later, he sold his stake in Guggenheim and left its board of directors. But ties remain: Last July, he and Guggenheim's Walter acquired a 27 percent stake in the Lakers from Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz — about the closest Boehly comes to a local connection.

Boehly has a diverse portfolio. His list of investments includes Cain International, a London real estate firm; European investment firm Blackbrook Capital; digital tech companies such as Gopuff and Dataminr; video game developer Tripledot Studios; and restaurant chains as varied as Le Pain Quotidien and Chuck E. Cheese. But thus far, his attempts to nab Chelsea F.C. have been unsuccessful. In 2019, Chelsea's owner, Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich, rejected a $3 billion bid offered by Boehly and his partners, but he's currently trying again — and this week, he reportedly added former chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne to his team.

And then there's Boehly's association with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, whose signature Golden Globes event became so scandal-plagued that NBC declined to broadcast the 2022 edition. Last week, Boehly, who's served as the HFPA's interim CEO since last October, announced a plan that calls for Eldridge to form a new company to buy the assets of the Globes and transform it from a nonprofit into a private, for-profit firm under his personal supervision. In addition, Boehly proposed increasing the number of Globe voters from just over 100 to around 300, and to diversify the membership overall as a way to counter negative perceptions that inspired the popular hashtag #GlobesSoWhite.

The National Football League has been similarly chastised for having an ownership club that's all Caucasian. But Sportico, which broke the story about Boehly's bid, as well as those of Walton and Harris, notes that "all five Broncos groups are expected to have minority investors, a stated priority of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell." That's one reason that Goodell has encouraged the potential participation of Robert F. Smith, who's both a Denver native and America's richest Black billionaire, despite some baggage. Smith has had recent issues with the IRS, and there are concerns that his FlyFisher Group, which has been buying properties in Five Points, is hurting, not helping, local businesses in the historic Black area of Denver.

Sportico reports that all five major bidders are expected to have in-person meetings with the Broncos brain trust in early May. To get a sense of how Boehly might perform, here's an extended Yahoo! Finance interview with him from last year.