Baseball is rarely the only asset on the table. A growing number of MLB owners also control franchises in other major pro sports leagues — and in some cases, they control entire cities’ worth of teams. Here’s who’s running what, and why it matters.
Mark Attanasio: From Milwaukee to England
Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark L. Attanasio isn’t just an MLB owner anymore. As of October 2024, he controls 85% of Norwich City FC, an English soccer club competing in the Championship — England’s second division. Different continent, different sport, same playbook: one owner, multiple franchises, multiple markets. It’s a structure that’s more common in MLB than most fans notice, and in 2026 it’s operating at a scale that didn’t exist a decade ago.
Jerry Reinsdorf: The Rarest Trophy Case in American Sports
Jerry Reinsdorf bought the Chicago Bulls in 1985 for $9.2 million. That was 41 years ago, when an NBA franchise in Chicago cost less than a single year’s MLB payroll does today. He had already bought the Chicago White Sox four years earlier, in 1981.
What makes Reinsdorf genuinely unique isn’t that he owns two teams. It’s that he’s the only American owner with both a World Series title and multiple NBA championships on the same shelf. The Bulls won six titles in the 1990s with Michael Jordan. The White Sox won the World Series in 2005. That combination doesn’t exist anywhere else in U.S. sports ownership. Two teams, two sports, one metro area, completely separate arenas and calendars — same owner for over four decades.
The Ilitch Family: Two Teams, One Roof
The Ilitch family operates a different model entirely. Christopher Ilitch runs both the Detroit Tigers (MLB) and the Detroit Red Wings (NHL) — and both teams play in the same building: Little Caesars Arena, which opened in 2017. That makes the Ilitches the only ownership group in North America running an MLB and NHL franchise simultaneously in the same city under the same roof. Shared infrastructure simplifies some things and complicates others: overlapping schedules, shared fan bases, and one arena budget that has to serve two sports.
Toronto: One Owner, Four Franchises, One City
The most extreme case of concentrated ownership in North American pro sports right now is Toronto. After purchasing the remaining 25% of MLSE for CA$4.35 billion in July 2026, Edward S. Rogers III became the sole owner of virtually every major professional sports franchise in the city:
- Toronto Blue Jays (MLB)
- Toronto Raptors (NBA)
- Toronto Maple Leafs (NHL)
- Toronto FC (MLS)
All four under one corporate umbrella. This isn’t multi-market diversification like Attanasio or Reinsdorf — it’s four elite franchises in a single city, with calendars that overlap almost year-round, fan bases that overlap significantly, and budgets that compete with each other for every dollar of investment. There’s nothing quite like it anywhere else in North American sports.
Why This Still Matters in 2026
Multi-team ownership shapes how money gets spent on rosters, how owners negotiate stadium deals with cities, and how ticket and broadcast markets get managed. An owner running two or more franchises operates with different incentives than one who has skin in only one game.
Attanasio in Milwaukee, Reinsdorf in Chicago, the Ilitch family in Detroit, Rogers in Toronto — in every case, baseball shares a roof with another business. Sometimes it’s the crown jewel. Sometimes it’s one piece of a much larger portfolio. But it’s never truly standalone. And understanding that is part of understanding who actually calls the shots in MLB — and why they make the decisions they do.
Ownership data verified as of August 12, 2026.
