Who owns the San Diego Padres? José Feliciano, explained

José E. Feliciano and his wife Kwanza Jones took control of the San Diego Padres in August 2026 after MLB ownership approved their $3.9 billion bid—the highest price ever paid for a Major League Baseball team. Feliciano, a Puerto Rico native and co-founder of Clearlake Capital, runs the club alongside Jones, a singer, lawyer and philanthropist who will become the first Black woman to be a majority co-owner of an MLB franchise. The couple leads a personal investment group separate from Feliciano’s other holdings, including his stake in Chelsea FC.

🏟️ Ownership at a glance

Principal owner	José E. Feliciano
Controlling group	Personal investment group of Kwanza Jones and José E
Current group since	2026
Purchase price	$3.9B
Latest valuation	$3.1B
Owner’s net worth	$3.9B
Value multiple	0.8× the purchase price

Heads up: Transaction in progress. The Seidler family agreed to sell the franchise to José E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones for $3.9 billion—the highest price paid for an MLB team—with initial approval from Major League Baseball on August 4, 2026 and final voting by the 30 owners in mid-August. Until it closes, the control person registered with MLB remains John Seidler. This entry will be updated once the sale is final.

Who is José Feliciano

Feliciano, 53, was born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, and holds degrees in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton (1994) and an MBA from Stanford. He started in investment banking at Goldman Sachs, served as CFO of the failed dot-com govWorks, and was a partner at Tennenbaum Capital before co-founding Clearlake Capital in 2006 with Behdad Eghbali. The firm now manages more than $90 billion in assets and ranks among the world’s twelve largest private equity firms.

Jones, born in Los Angeles, won Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater while a Princeton student, released the single «Think Again» which reached number 21 on the Billboard chart in 2011, and earned her law degree from Cardozo and a master’s in dispute resolution from Pepperdine. Together they have donated more than $200 million since 2017 to Princeton, Stanford, Bennett College and other institutions. Feliciano sits on the board of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino.

How they bought the team

Feliciano and Jones purchased the Padres for $3.9 billion, breaking the previous record of $2.4 billion paid by Steve Cohen for the Mets in 2020 and an undisclosed sum by David Rubenstein for the Orioles in March 2024. The sale closed in August 2026 after MLB ownership approval on August 4. John Seidler remained the registered control person until closing.

The Padres have changed hands four times since 1994, when John Moores owned the club. In 2012, a group led by Ron Fowler and the Seidler family purchased the team for $800 million. Peter Seidler assumed control in 2020, followed by his brother John Seidler in 2025. The Seidler-O’Malley group nearly quintupled its investment in fourteen years.

Year	Buyer	Amount
1994	John Moores	—
2012	Seidler-O’Malley Group (Ron Fowler as control person, with Peter and Tom Seidler and the children of Peter O’Malley)	$800M
2020	Peter Seidler (assumes as control person)	—
2025	John Seidler (assumes as control person)	—
2026	Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano	$3.9B

What else they own

Feliciano co-founded and remains a managing partner of Clearlake Capital, which has acquired companies including Alteryx and Dun & Bradstreet. He has been a co-owner of Chelsea FC since May 2022 in a transaction valued at more than £4.25 billion alongside Todd Boehly and BlueCo. He and Jones operate the Kwanza Jones & José E. Feliciano Initiative, a giving and impact investment fund with $50 million committed to entrepreneurs from underrepresented groups, and Jones runs SUPERCHARGED by Kwanza Jones, a media and motivation company.

Feliciano’s Chelsea stake creates an unusual cross-ownership with Todd Boehly, who is also a minority partner of the Dodgers—the Padres’ division rival. The couple sits on the boards of Stanford University and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino.

Where the games air

The Padres have operated outside the regional sports network system since May 31, 2023, when Diamond Sports dropped Bally Sports San Diego. MLB now produces and distributes all local games under the Padres TV brand, sponsored by UC San Diego Health. In 2026, broadcasts air on Cox 83, DirecTV 694-3, AT&T Uverse 781/1781 and Spectrum 305/443, and stream without blackouts on Padres.TV for $19.99 per month or $99.99 per season; ten Saturday games air free over the air on CBS 8 and The CW. Don Orsillo and Mark Grant call games in English with Tony Gwynn Jr., while all 162 games air on 97.3 The Fan in English and XEMO-AM 860 La Poderosa in Spanish, with Spanish audio also available via SAP on television.

Facts worth knowing

$3.9 billion is an absolute record for an MLB franchise. It breaks the $2.4 billion that Steve Cohen paid for the Mets in 2020 and the an undisclosed sum David Rubenstein paid for the Orioles in March 2024. The Seidlers bought in 2012 for $800 million: almost five times their money in fourteen years.
The family fight was brutal. In January 2025, Sheel Kamal Seidler, widow of Peter, sued her brothers-in-law Matthew and Robert Seidler accusing them of ‘flagrant acts of self-dealing’ with her husband’s estate and trusts. On February 4, 2026 she withdrew with prejudice the majority of the lawsuits (she can no longer refile them) and only claims for breach of duty to distribute and a petition for accounting remained alive. A probate court in Travis County, Texas, appointed a neutral representative so that the settlement would bind all beneficiaries.
Matthew Seidler went so far as to publicly suggest that his sister-in-law’s lawsuit was the reason the Padres lost the bidding for Japanese Roki Sasaki in January 2025.
Peter Seidler is the man who gave San Diego the most ambitious payroll in its history (Machado, Tatis Jr., Darvish, Soto, Bogaerts) and died without seeing a title; he was the nephew of Peter O’Malley and grandson of Walter O’Malley, the man who took the Dodgers to Los Angeles.
José E. Feliciano becomes one of the very few Latino majority owners in MLB history, and Kwanza Jones would be the first Black woman majority co-owner of a Major League club. Feliciano was born in Bayamón, the same island that gives MLB Roberto Clemente, Iván Rodríguez and Francisco Lindor.
Feliciano will own an MLB team and be a majority co-owner of Chelsea FC at the same time, and will have Todd Boehly as a cross-partner, who is also a minority partner of the Dodgers, the Padres’ divisional rival.

Where they stand among the 30 owners

List	Rank
By franchise value	#10 de 30
By purchase price	#1 de 27
By owner’s net worth	#12 de 21
By years in charge	#30 de 30

Amounts are nominal and not adjusted for inflation: comparing a decades-old purchase price with today’s valuation overstates the real gain.

The Padres rank tenth among the 30 MLB franchises by current valuation but first by purchase price—a nominal figure that exceeds what any team has ever cost. Feliciano and Jones are among the rarest majority Latino owners in MLB history; both were born on islands with deep baseball roots, and Jones becomes the first Black woman to hold majority co-ownership of a big league club. The team’s connection to Latin baseball runs deep through the border, with Tijuana 20 miles away and a pipeline of talent from the Alfredo Harp Helú Academy in Oaxaca, which had eleven of its alumni in the Padres organization as of the sale.