The Dallas Cowboys are arguably the biggest brand in North American sports. The most recent list of Forbes NFL team valuations has Dallas at the top, worth an estimated $9 billion, making Jerry Jones the most influential owner in professional sports.

Jones has three Super Bowl rings and already owns a gold jacket as a Pro Hall of Fame member. His resume is as complete as it could ever be, even if Big D does end up winning another title in the next few years. Jones is one of the most hands-on owners you’ll find, and he seems to sincerely love being part of the National Football League.

What if Jerry Jones Sold the Cowboys?

6Who would be the interested buyers, and why?

But he’s also 81 years old. At some point, it’s possible that he wakes up and tells himself he wants to walk away and live the life of an extremely wealthy retiree. If that happens, it would mean Jerry Jones would be doing what may seem unthinkable: he would be selling the Dallas Cowboys (yes, Jones does have three kids working for the Cowboys organization, but with a sale, they would all be more than well-compensated financially so that’s not all that big a concern).

This brings up the intriguing question of who could possibly afford to buy such a pricey entity. The Cowboys, along with their training facility and brand recognition, would easily sell for the full $9 billion, if not more, given that new TV contracts are driving revenues ever higher.

There are a few folks out there, some you know and others you might not have heard of (yet). For the sake of this exercise, we will only look at individuals with financial clout as sole owners of a team. If we start going down the rabbit hole of ownership groups where the NFL mandates the principal owner take at least a 30% stake in the team because it doesn’t allow private equity ownership (yet), and there can’t be more than $1.5 billion in debt borrowed against the purchase price and blah blah blah it opens up far too many possibilities and just muddies the waters.

This is also not simply going to be a list of the most wealthy individuals on the planet. We’re looking for folks who have shown a legitimate interest in professional sports ownership here. Next to the individual’s names, you will find their estimated net worth, which we are taking from the Forbes Real Time Billionaires List at the time of this writing (what a time to be alive that a list like that exists!). We’ll start with the most obvious candidate.

5Jeff Bezos ($187.1 billion)

Amazon’s executive chairman already has a relationship with the NFL

Amazon’s Prime Video is the NFL’s Thursday Night Football Game broadcast partner, so Jeff Bezos is already well-versed in how the league operates. It kind of feels like this is more a matter of when he’s going to buy a team than if he’s going to buy a team.

Bezos was rumored to be among those in the mix who would purchase the last few NFL franchises that have come up for sale. Most people assumed he would have the right of first refusal on the Washington Commanders because of his ties to the DC area, but he either wasn’t happy with the situation or Daniel Snyder, who did not hide his disdain for Bezos and the way he thought the Washington Post characterized the embattled former owner, simply refused to sell the team to him.

There have been whispers that the league and commissioner Roger Goodell would rather have Bezos take control of another team … say, for example, and we’re just spitballing here, the one paying $1 a year in rent to the Rams in Los Angeles and is currently in the hands of an owner who is not liked very much in San Diego.

Bezos is currently the second-richest human being on the planet behind Elon Musk (who we are leaving off this list because the NFL probably doesn’t want to bring that kind of polarizing personality into the fold). He has the financial clout to pay $9 billion in cash for the Cowboys, so the rest of the league’s owners would be wise to do anything they can to bring him into the club.

4Sergey Brin ($132.7 billion)

Google co-founder has been a lover of extreme sports since his college days.

When he was studying at Stanford, Sergey Brin participated in various sports. He joined a skiing team, a gymnastics team, an inline skating team, and even a trapeze team. He’s also dabbled in roller hockey, ultimate frisbee, and springboard diving, and it’s not hard to find pictures of him jumping out of an airplane. In an interview with Business Insider, Brin says, “I like to do a variety of acrobatic things.”

So, yeah, the Google co-founder likes to stay active and is kind of an adrenaline junkie.

With athletics being such a major part of his life, it would make sense for Brin to own a professional sports franchise. Plus, it would just be fun to see him taking the coaching staff to a local circus training center for team-building exercises. Yes, he did that at Google, and it obviously worked, so start limbering, Mike McCarthy!

3Steve Ballmer ($121.5 billion)

Clippers owner is nothing if not enthusiastic about having his own NBA team.

Steve Ballmer made Microsoft money and used it to buy the Los Angeles Clippers. Since then, he has been front and center on the baseline for home games, spent big money on free agents, and generally energized a fan base that has lived in the Lakers shadow for the better part of three decades.

He built a state-of-the-art facility next to SoFi Stadium, the Intuit Dome, which will open in 2024 and will give the Clippers their own home for the first time since they left the ancient Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena in 1999. It also has more than 1,000 toilets, which honestly is something every arena on the planet should aspire to.

The NFL did away with its archaic rule that prevented owners from having teams in other markets, so having a franchise in LA and Dallas would not be a problem. Ballmer has proven his dedication to his team. He would be a solid choice to be the caretaker of one of the National Football League’s most iconic and history-laden franchises.

2Michael Dell ($88.5 billion)

Dell Technologies CEO has already dipped his toe into the pool of professional sports ownership.

In 2021, Michael Dell joined the investment group that owns the San Antonio Spurs. The tech giant is extremely active with the charitable aspect of the Dell Technologies Match Play event on the PGA Tour. One of his books is “Play Nice But Win.”

All that together makes him sound like quite the sporty kind of fellow, does it not?

In an interview with CNBC, Dell was asked if he would ever consider being the principal owner of a team. He responded, “I consider a lot of things,” which is not a solid no. If an emotional link to a club is a factor for prospective owners, then Dell might have the best case for everyone on this list to buy the Cowboys. He was born in Texas, attended the University of Texas, and still lives in Austin.

1Larry Ellison ($164.9 billion)

Oracle co-founder has long been a sportsman, unafraid to spend big bucks to win.

Larry Ellison loves winning. There are rumors he spent $400 million to win the America’s Cup (for which he was a 2022 inductee to The America’s Cup Hall of Fame). How much would the Oracle co-founder pony up to win the Super Bowl?

Ellison has wanted to join the ranks of North American professional sports owners for a while now. He tried to buy the Golden State Warriors in 2010. His name came up when the Portland Trailblazers, Memphis Grizzlies and Phoenix Suns were on the market. He’s an avid tennis fan and a fixture at Indian Wells, even sharing a box with NFL legend Larry Fitzgerald. He has that kind of clout because, in 2009, he bought the BNP Paribas Open and the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, which hosts what many in tennis call the 5th Grand Slam event.

Plus, this guy has just lived a fascinating life. He dropped out of college and, in 1977, started a company building databases. His first customer was the CIA—not the Culinary Institute of America, the Central Intelligence Agency. The database was code-named Oracle, which was so successful that Ellison changed the name of the company.

So far, Ellison has not been linked to any National Football League teams. However, for an asset like the Dallas Cowboys, that could change.

Of course, the reason he hasn’t been successful in buying a team yet maybe his old affiliation with the CIA, so it’s TBD.