From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   The Billionaire Tycoon Who Can’t Stop Buying Sports Teams   
   By Joshua Robinson, Oct. 20, 2023, WSJ   
   Jim Ratcliffe, the British petrochemicals billionaire, was on a 5,000-mile   
   motorcycle journey through the Andes a few years ago and feeling pretty bored   
   with the state of sports. No one was really going after the biggest barriers   
   in human performance    
   anymore, he thought. What was even left?   
      
   Then, somewhere on the road in Argentina, he settled on a sporting achievement   
   that actually excited him: Ratcliffe wanted to see someone run a marathon in   
   under 2 hours. So he hired some of the best scientists in sports and the best   
   marathoner in the    
   world to make it happen. And in 2019, on a closed course in Vienna, Eliud   
   Kipchoge ran 26.2 miles in 1 hour and 59 minutes.   
      
   This, Ratcliffe realized, was how he wanted to spend his time. Being   
   Britain’s richest man wasn’t enough, he was also in the process of making   
   himself one of the world’s wealthiest, most influential armchair sports fans.   
      
   Over the next four years, Ratcliffe’s empire would expand from the Ineos   
   petrochemical firm to include the professional cycling outfit formerly known   
   as Team Sky, soccer clubs in France and Switzerland, a stake in the Mercedes   
   Formula One team, and    
   this week, was set to add a 25% share in the English soccer behemoth,   
   Manchester United for around $1.5 billion.   
      
   Yet the most remarkable thing about Ratcliffe’s sporting enterprises is that   
   he appears to be growing them not for profit but purely for his own amusement.   
   Some sports fans buy streaming packages and season tickets to serve their   
   entertainment needs.    
   The 71-year-old Ratcliffe, who splits his time between the U.K. and Monaco,   
   simply went out and bought the teams he liked. And with a fortune widely   
   estimated to exceed $30 billion, he could afford it.   
      
   â€œThere’s no clear strategic direction that’s led to the choices that   
   have been made,â€� Fran Millar, the former CEO of Ineos Sports, told The Wall   
   Street Journal in 2019. “Jim’s a very passionate guy…He’s at a stage   
   in his life where I    
   think he’s making decisions based on what’s a fun, interesting, cool thing   
   to do.â€�   
      
   A spokesperson for Ratcliffe didn’t respond to a request for comment.   
      
   The irony is that his pet projects now play out in front of millions of fans,   
   while the business that put him in a position to fund them is largely   
   unfamiliar to the general public. The Ineos Group, which Ratfcliffe founded in   
   1998, might be the    
   Manchester United of global chemical companies, but it can’t quite compare   
   to the actual Manchester United for broad recognition. As people close to   
   Ratcliffe used to tell him: Ineos was the biggest company that no one had ever   
   heard of.    
      
   That tends to suit Ratcliffe just fine. The son of a woodworker from the   
   Manchester area, he earned a degree in chemical engineering, cut his teeth at   
   major oil companies, and worked a stint in private equity before launching   
   into his own chemicals    
   business in the 1990s.   
      
   On the occasions that Ineos did make headlines, it was often for the wrong   
   reasons. The company has run afoul of environmental groups in the U. K.—and   
   occasionally butted heads with the British government—for its work in the   
   importing and extraction    
   of shale gas derived from fracking. In 2013, Ratcliffe’s clash with striking   
   workers at a petrochemical plant in Scotland led to the plant’s closure, the   
   loss of 800 Ineos jobs. Ratcliffe’s perceived intransigence earned him the   
   nickname of a Bond    
   villain: Dr. No.   
      
   In the meantime, Ratcliffe was using his astronomical wealth to fund projects   
   that included the Brexit campaign, a line of 4×4 vehicles inspired by Land   
   Rovers, and his personal Bond-style adventures. There were expeditions to the   
   North and South Pole.    
   There was the motorbike jaunt through the Andes. There was his first   
   superyacht, the Hampshire, which he then upgraded in 2011 to the 257-foot   
   Hampshire II.   
      
   But as he reached his mid-60s, Ratcliffe was ready to cultivate an even more   
   expensive habit: buying into professional sports. He began with a nine-figure   
   investment in Great Britain’s America’s Cup sailing team. A keen cyclist,   
   he then took over the    
   dominant Tour de France team of the 2010s and immediately promised it the   
   largest budget in the sport. That was around the same time that he reportedly   
   spent more than $20 million on the 2-hour marathon project.    
      
   â€œIneos never wants to be the dumb money in town,â€� Ratcliffe told the Times   
   of London in 2019. “Never, never.â€�   
      
   As any billionaire who has dabbled in the ownership of professional teams will   
   tell you, dumb money and sports have a long history together—particularly   
   when it comes to soccer. Teams are overpriced. European leagues bring the   
   threat of relegation. And    
   players aren’t traded between teams the way they are in the U.S. They’re   
   bought and sold at huge expense with few opportunities to recoup any of those   
   costs down the road.    
      
   That’s why Ratcliffe’s first soccer purchases weren’t in his native   
   England at all. Despite growing up as a Manchester United fan and once owning   
   season tickets at Chelsea, he began by acquiring the second-tier Swiss club FC   
   Lausanne-Sport in 2017    
   for €7 million. Then, two years later, he picked up the first-division OGC   
   Nice on the French Riviera for €110 million.   
      
   Ratcliffe’s investment in United is considerably pricier. Then again, few   
   professional sports outfits in the world can boast Man United’s commercial   
   clout. The club’s bigger problem is that under the ownership of the American   
   Glazer family, it hasnâ   
   €™t won a Premier League title since 2013.   
      
   United supporters had been clamoring for fresh investment. But Ratcliffe’s   
   arrival hardly guarantees success. In fact, it almost suggests the opposite.    
      
   For all of his lavish spending across the sports universe, his cycling team   
   hasn’t won the Tour de France since its first full season as Team Ineos.   
   Mercedes hasn’t claimed an F1 drivers’ championship since Ineos bought in.   
   And despite Ratcliffe’   
   s best efforts, one of the longest losing streaks in sports still remains   
   intact: no British boat has ever won the America’s Cup.   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/world/uk/the-billionaire-tycoon-who-cant-sto   
   -buying-sports-teams-a275860b   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)