Kyle Goon: Sports owners are disconnected from fans. It’s the biggest problem in the game.

I’ll admit it: David Rubenstein’s bemused reaction to fans at baseball’s trade deadline made me roll my eyes.

Since he took over as the Orioles’ controlling owner in March 2024, it has become explicitly clear how little the 77-year-old Rubenstein cared for sports until he suddenly owned a team. In the last 2 1/2 years, Rubenstein has regarded sports fandom with the same scientific curiosity as an anthropologist would a newly discovered remote tribal society.

Sometimes it feels as if Orioles fans have that much in common with the team owner, too.

Hours after the Orioles traded Adley Rutschman, a catcher so beloved to Baltimore that people named their kids and pets after him, Rubenstein seemed positively flummoxed by the wave of sentiment around that and other deals.

“I’m getting emails from people all over the country talking about trades we made, as if you think they have nothing else to think about,” he said. “But people are obsessed with the trades we’ve made and trades other teams have made.”

The Baltimore-born billionaire and philanthropist has been so consistently surprised by the intense passions around sports — shared by millions of people in this country and billions around the world — I’ve sort of shrugged off these kinds of comments from him, even though they smack of naiveté for someone so academically inclined.

I would probably have left it there, too — except Rubenstein’s compatriots have been behaving so grotesquely, with such casual contempt for their sports and the people who love them (and who help drive their team valuations to unforeseen heights) that those words have curdled in my brain:

As if you think they have nothing else to think about.

Ugh.

Although Rubenstein may have been speaking off the cuff, you can’t miss the whiff of disdain.

The mindset displays, at minimum, a profound disconnect between the well-heeled elites who own teams today and the fans who buy tickets, jerseys and an ever-growing list of streaming subscriptions just to watch one professional league — not to mention three or four. And, if you really watch how owners are behaving across the country, it becomes clear how problematic this widening gulf is.

In years past, owners were local car dealers, lawyers or real estate barons who were rich but more accessible. Rubenstein even outlined how much ownership has changed: “If you go back 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years ago, you found, businesspeople were buying them that nobody ever heard of.”

For all his foibles, Peter Angelos bought an Orioles team in distress in part because he was a fan, in part for civic-minded reasons. Compared to today’s owners, the Angelos of the 1990s would be considered a pauper. This didn’t necessarily mean that owners made great choices for their franchises, but their ownership was more likely to be born of passion than profit.

What forced me to reconsider Rubenstein’s attitude was a shocking event on the West Coast. Mark Walter, the megawealthy owner of the Dodgers, sold his controlling share of the Lakers to Bob Iger and Josh Kushner for a record $12.5 billion — turning a 25% profit after roughly 10 months of ownership. With two of Walter’s companies under government investigation, the sale raises some concerning questions over why Walter is seemingly cashing out on a number of his assets.

I immediately thought about dozens of people who were laid off by the team in May, amid a “reorganization,” presumably into the Walter way of doing business.

Friends of mine who had been team photographers for years — including one who had lived in the NBA pandemic bubble in Orlando, Florida, for 100 days — were unceremoniously dismissed as relics of the previous era. It’s worth noting the Lakers were notorious for years for underpaying employees (relative to other NBA franchises). Management instead counted on the franchise’s prestige to draw people who wanted to be around the purple and gold for love of the game.

Then, after all those years, a pink slip was the thanks they got from the new owner.

It made me upset, but that’s an even more bitter pill now, because Walter — who was already one of the world’s richest men — stands to make a $2.5 billion profit for his brief stewardship, which will be best remembered for losing LeBron James in free agency.

It’s contemptible from every angle, and I wish nothing but the worst for Walter and his portfolio as he faces government scrutiny to come.

By the way, new owner layoffs now seem like a formality in sports. Alex Rodriguez, Rubenstein’s fellow panelist in the American University forum, did it when he acquired the Minnesota Timberwolves. Hard to say whether A-Rod is more unlikable as a Yankee or an owner.

That’s far from the only ugliness around sports ownership today:

• In Portland, new Trail Blazers owner Tom Dundon is clashing with the city over funding for a new arena. Like Walters, Dundon (who also owns the NHL champion Carolina Hurricanes) has laid off staff and set a new low bar in the NBA by signing a head coach to a one-year contract.
• Phoenix Suns owner Mat Ishbia, a former Michigan State Spartan, leveraged his company United Wholesale Mortgage to purchase the franchise in 2023. The company’s stock has greatly diminished in value, forcing Ishbia to sign a rescue deal. Reporting from Hunterbrook Media suggests Ishbia has stripped his company of cash for years with a board that is composed of family members and close associates. While UWM called Hunterbrook’s reporting not “a credible or objective source for determining the facts,” the allegations have raised eyebrows across the NBA that another owner’s financial turbulence could affect his team ownership.
• In Sacramento, California, the corpse of the Athletics continues to play in a converted Triple-A ballpark that features a “walk of shame” across the field to the clubhouse, which is not connected to the dugout. The move from Oakland was so well thought out by owner John Fisher that, as of January, the team can’t claim the trademark “Las Vegas Athletics.”

This is but a small sample of the ways owners have futzed around in sports and are causing ripple effects. Meanwhile, most are benefiting from public money, all while watching franchise valuations soar.

There is no true punishment for an owner who does a bad job — at best, they are forced to sell and live off the billions they get in return. It says something about sports ownership in America that Dan Snyder managed the Washington football franchise into the ground yet lives abroad with a multibillion-dollar fortune to show for his scandal-ridden stewardship.

We can point to philanthropic efforts by many owners, too, including Rubenstein’s dedication to national monuments and museums and the Ravens’ Steve Bisciotti’s support of local youth centers and medical development. As frustrated as owners make us, it’s not usually a completely one-sided picture.

Still, it’s clear that sports ownership is vastly different than it used to be and teams are acquired by much more fiscally savvy investment groups for much different reasons — namely to exploit fan loyalty for money.

Meanwhile, sports are increasingly unaffordable for fans. Season ticket packages, concessions and streaming platforms cost a substantial sum as folks who made their money in private equity (like Rubenstein) approve costs that are passed on to their loyal flocks.

Deals with questionable partners, such as sports gambling companies, private equity firms and Saudi sportswashing interests, are increasingly welcome because they raise the bottom line. Meanwhile, it’s clear some owners aren’t interested in winning as much as saving, which was highlighted by leaked text messages in the NFL’s collusion case against Lamar Jackson.

If Rubenstein thinks the social concerns of sports fans are strange, well, there are times that I think the behavior of ultra-wealthy people is just as odd. For example, I can’t figure out why Rubenstein — who has a deep and abiding interest in the legacies of U.S. presidents — struggles to say one negative thing in public about the president who kicked him out of his Kennedy Center chairmanship. But I guess all of us have social standards that seem peculiar to someone else.

I hear from fans often who feel their loyalty and passion are being monetized to make rich people richer.

They don’t understand why people love shucking peanuts in the cheap seats. They don’t understand shivering through freezing weather for a primetime kickoff. They don’t understand how much high-fiving Lamar Jackson or Pete Alonso can mean. They’re too high above it.

I don’t even think Rubenstein is a “bad” owner in the grand scheme of things. But I’m also not sure how good that makes him.

It’s fitting to me that Rubenstein’s particular curiosity in sports led him down a path to writing a book about sports owners and the lessons they have to offer. I’ve not yet read the book, but I’m skeptical of how much insight is to be gained from other rich folks who are most concerned with squeezing out every dollar.

It seems to me that the worldview that would teach Rubenstein more about sports could be found in the emails in his inbox from fans waiting to be taken seriously.

Instead of writing another book, try reading. Some of this might eventually sink in.