Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, is known as a philanthropist par excellence, generous with her money for the good of others. Her latest move shows she is just as adept at making money as she is at giving it away, and she did it all in one swift deal. The billionaire owner of the $120 million superyacht Venus has officially exited Monumental Sports & Entertainment, selling her entire stake to private equity firm Arctos Partners and the Qatar Investment Authority. The transaction values the company at roughly $7.2 billion, ending Powell Jobs’s involvement just shy of a decade after she first invested in 2017.
The founder of Emerson Collective bought roughly 20 percent of Monumental in 2017, then valued at about $500 million, making her once the group’s largest shareholder outside of Ted Leonsis. Based on this sale, she pocketed an estimated $950 million, effectively tripling her investment, a return that could buy five more Venus superyachts with just this one deal.
Monumental Sports owns the NBA’s Washington Wizards, the NHL’s Washington Capitals, the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, Capital One Arena, and Monumental Sports Network. Arctos Partners joins as a new minority investor, while Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund increases its ownership, strengthening its presence in U.S. sports. Qatar’s fund first bought a 5 percent passive stake in Monumental in 2023, making it the only sovereign wealth fund to invest directly in a major U.S. sports team.
Arctos now holds stakes in more than 25 professional sports teams, including several NBA franchises. According to Sportico, Powell Jobs, worth $14 billion, was reported to be considering the sale of some of her Monumental equity in January 2024. She is now nearly $1 billion richer as she heads into a new year that surely begins with a billion-dollar bang. As for Monumental’s remaining minority investors, they include billionaire Jeffrey Skoll, BET co-founder Sheila Johnson, and Washington Nationals owner Mark Lerner.
