Walmart heir Rob Walton could buy Denver Broncos for $4.5 billion: Report

The Denver Broncos will have a new owner for the first time since 1984.

According to Forbes magazine, Rob Walton is set to purchase the franchise with a winning bid of approximately $4.5 billion. The winning bid has not yet been confirmed, but it is anticipated to be disclosed “as early as this month,” according to Forbes. A deal of this magnitude could go through at any time, but given Walton’s riches and tremendous resources, it appears exceedingly unlikely at this moment.

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Officially, the second round of bids will not be submitted until Monday, so there will most likely be no announcement for a few weeks.

The Broncos have moved closer to a sale in recent weeks, with prospective purchasers visiting the team’s headquarters in May. Despite the fact that there were four other finalists interested in purchasing the squad, none of them could equal Walton’s fortune. According to Forbes, Rob Walton, the son of Walmart founder Sam Walton, is worth an estimated $59.6 billion.

Once the deal is completed, Walton will not only be the NFL’s richest owner, but he will also have a larger net worth than the NFL’s next six richest owners combined. At $16.7 billion, Panthers owner David Tepper presently has the greatest net worth in the NFL.

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If the ultimate price is $4.5 billion, it will break the American record for the highest money ever given for a sports franchise. The Nets now hold the record, being sold for $2.35 billion in August 2019. The $4.5 billion price tag would also nearly quadruple the price of the most expensive NFL franchise ever sold, which occurred in 2018 when Tepper paid $2.275 billion for the Carolina Panthers.

The Broncos were projected to be worth just under $4 billion as recently as early April, but NFL franchises are a big seller that doesn’t come up for sale very often, which has likely contributed to the price increase.

Walton, 77, will purchase the franchise from the Pat Bowlen trust. Bowlen purchased the team in 1984 for a mere $78 million. From 1984 until his death in 2019, Bowlen supervised one of the NFL’s most successful franchises, the Denver Broncos, who went to seven Super Bowls and won three of them. Bowlen died in 2019, and the organisation has been controlled by his trust since then. Following his death three years ago, there was continual talk that the team might be sold, but that didn’t materialise until February of this year.

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Walton, on the other hand, will not be the first Walmart heir to acquire a team, nor will he be the first with ties to NFL ownership. Ann Walton Kroenke, Rob Walton’s cousin, is the husband of Rams owner Stan Kroenke. If you’re curious in Ann’s family tree, Sam Walton is her uncle. Bud, Sam’s brother and a co-founder of Walmart, was Ann’s father.