Meet The Billionaire Family Behind The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, One Of The NFL’s Least Valuable Teams

Twenty-two years ago, Malcolm Glazer owned the third-most valuable NFL franchise. It’s now down to a record low No. 29. Can his heirs’ Brady-led revival finally turn things around?

Party like it’s 2003.

At least that’s the plan for the Glazer family, owners of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, whose resurgent team faces the Kansas City Chiefs tonight in Super Bowl LV.

It’s been a long and painful wait. The last time the Bucs made the championship they had one of the NFL’s shiniest new stadiums, a charismatic and popular head coach and a gifted roster that included two future Hall of Famers. They crushed the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XXXVII, delivering Tampa Bay its first – and only – Vince Lombardi Trophy.

It was also the year Malcolm Glazer, who died in 2014, became a billionaire. The scrappy, self-taught businessman turned early real estate and junk bond investments into a family fortune that today includes roughly $600 million of real estate around the country, the Bucs and Premier League soccer club Manchester United. It’s all now valued at $5.8 billion and in the hands of his six children. Four of them – Bryan, Darcie, Edward and Joel – are leading a Buccaneers renaissance that rips a few pages from the patriarch’s playbook, including a $50 million bet on future Hall of Fame quarterback Tom Brady, who they paired with offensive guru Bruce Arians and a litany of young, talented players. They also delivered a first in NFL history as the Bucs become the only team so far to play on their home turf, Raymond James Stadium, which was chosen years earlier as this Super Bowl’s neutral-site host.

“Being back in the Super Bowl is a tremendous feeling, but ultimately our goal is to win,” says Joel Glazer, one of four siblings who runs the Bucs. “Our father would have loved this group of players and coaches.” Joel and brothers Edward and Bryan all co-chair the Buccaneers, while sister Darcie is president of the organization’s foundation and the Glazer Vision Foundation.

They’ll be facing a resurgent opponent that has billionaire backers with a comeback story of their own, the $15.5 billion Hunt family. Purchased by Lamar Hunt, son of oil and gas legend H.L. Hunt, for $25,000 in 1960, the Chiefs are the NFL’s defending champions. Led by their young star Patrick Mahomes and legendary coach Andy Reid, they played in their first Super Bowl in 50 years last year, beating the San Francisco 49ers 31-20.

Billionaire Blitz

Super Bowl LV isn’t the first battle of the billionaires, and it won’t be the last. But this year’s game features a pair of comeback stories aiming to erase decades of mediocrity.

Malcolm Glazer arrived in the league much later than Hunt, buying the Bucs in 1995 by paying a then-record $192 million for one of the NFL’s worst franchises. “I’ve worked hard and long ever since I was 15 years old,” Glazer told Forbes shortly after buying the team. “It’s time I got a little fun out of life.”

He quit school as a teenager to tend to his family’s watch parts shop in upstate New York after his father died. Glazer caught his first taste of success after winning a contract to operate a watch and jewelry concession at an Air Force base in Geneva, New York, and began dabbling in stocks. He then tried his hand at real estate, borrowing heavily to buy rental houses in poor, working-class Rochester neighborhoods. Leveraging one property against another he branched out to commercial properties, then trailer parks and nursing homes.

In 1990, he sold a handful of network-affiliated TV stations he’d bought up in small, non-competitive markets for a $60 million profit. Next it was junk bonds, and it was perfect timing. Glazer got in heavily on the battered bonds of companies such as Amphenol, Pamida and Gilbert/Robinson just before a massive market rally that doubled his investment to roughly $160 million. Pressing his advantage, he doubled down on distressed businesses and by 1995, the year he bought the Bucs, he had a net worth that Forbes pegged at $300 million.

BURIED TREASURE

Once one of the NFL’s most valuable franchises, the Bucs have steadily fallen to the bottom of Forbes’ annual rankings even as their valuation continues to rise.

The fun in Tampa only lasted a few years. In 1999, the Bucs peaked at No. 3 on the Forbes ranking of the most valuable NFL teams, but it was all downhill after that. Glazer’s shiny new stadium soon began looking tattered against newer football palaces that were popping up across the league. His roster was aging too, and never fully rejuvenated. In 2009, the family fired Jon Gruden, the winningest coach in franchise history, which led into a 12-season playoff drought. Attendance dwindled and a stingy approach to talent only made it worse.

That dismal slide was made only more glaring against the success of the family’s other sports jewel, Manchester United. Glazer led a takeover of the club through a $1.4 billion deal that closed in 2005 and left it saddled with debt. Irate fans squealed until they began to see the results: Five Premier League titles, five domestic cups and a UEFA Champions League title. In 2019, before the pandemic, revenue peaked at $795 million, giving the club an enterprise value that Forbes estimated at almost $4 billion.

“Part of the reason they brought Brady in was to teach the young, great athletes how to win,” says sports consultant Marc Ganis, an associate of the Glazers. He added: “That will have benefits for succeeding years even after Brady retires.”

Still, this is the NFL, which collects massive revenue from TV contracts that get shared equally among all 32 clubs. The average team value has risen from $288 million in 1998, when Forbes began tracking them, to $3.05 billion today. The Bucs are worth $2.28 billion, up ten-fold from when Glazer purchased the team. A pretty good return even for a franchise that now ranks as one of American football’s worst investments—it sits 29th on Forbes’ list, its lowest ranking ever, six spots behind the $2.5 billion Chiefs.

“Put it this way,” Ganis says. “If I had the funds to buy a team in any league, it would be a team in the NFL.”