NFL owners gather in New York on Tuesday and Wednesday for their fall meeting, and two minority ownership deals are expected to come before them: Stephen Ross’s sale of 2.1% of the Miami Dolphins to financier Jean Eric Salata at a valuation just over $12.5 billion, and the first piece of a private-equity investment in the Atlanta Falcons.
Neither sale has been formally approved yet. Both have been reported in detail, but the league has not announced a vote result on either one, and any change of this kind needs the backing of at least 24 of the 32 clubs.
The Miami sale
Ross has agreed to part with a 2.1% slice of the Dolphins and the businesses tied to them, a package that takes in Hard Rock Stadium, the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix and the club’s share of the Miami Open tennis event. The price is about $262 million. No minority buyer has ever paid at a higher valuation for part of an NFL team.
The league’s finance committee cleared the deal last month, according to the reporting on it, which leaves the full ownership as the last step.
Salata, 60, was born in Chile and moved with his family to Erie, Pennsylvania, as a young boy. He built his money in Asia: he founded Baring Private Equity Asia in Hong Kong, sold it to the Swedish firm EQT in 2022 and is now EQT’s chairman. His personal fortune is put at about $8.4 billion.
It is Ross’s third trim of his holding in less than three years. In December 2024 he sold 10% to Ares Management and a combined 3% to Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai and Oliver Weisberg at an $8.1 billion valuation. In March of this year, Xiaomi co-founder Lin Bin bought in at the $12.5 billion mark that Salata now edges past.
Ross, 86, bought the club in 2009 for about $1 billion and has said he has no intention of giving up control. He named his daughter Jennifer as his successor in 2022 and has described the minority sales partly as estate planning, saying, “We’re keeping it in the family.”
The figure stands apart from the team’s football. Miami went into its Week 6 bye at 0-5 with the league’s worst point differential, minus-62. Minority stakes usually carry a premium, so the number is not a like-for-like comparison with a sale of a whole club; the record for a control purchase remains the $9.612 billion the Khosla family paid for the Seattle Seahawks, which owners approved unanimously in August.
The Atlanta deal
The second item is Arctos Partners’ move into Atlanta. The fund, which is owned by KKR, agreed in August to take 10% of the Falcons at a $10.6 billion valuation in two steps, starting with 7.5%. Arthur Blank, who bought the team for $545 million in 2002, owns a little under 73% of the club.
The Falcons would be Arctos’s fourth NFL investment, after the Los Angeles Chargers, Buffalo Bills and Cleveland Browns. League rules allow an approved private-equity fund to hold no more than 10% of any one club and to invest in no more than six, so approval would leave Arctos room for two more teams.
How the league got here
Owners voted 31-1 in August 2024 to let a short list of approved funds buy passive minority stakes, with the Cincinnati Bengals the lone no. The NFL’s limits are still the tightest in the major American leagues: a single fund can hold up to 20% of an NBA, NHL or MLS club and 15% of an MLB club, double or more the NFL’s cap. With the Falcons added, private-equity money would be in six NFL teams, Miami among them through Ares.
What comes next
The meeting runs Tuesday, October 20, and Wednesday, October 21, in New York. If both sales are approved, Salata joins the Dolphins‘ ownership group and Arctos completes the first 7.5% of its Falcons stake, with the rest due later.
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