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 Jim Irsay, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, isn’t exactly your typical NFL owner. As if the picture here didn’t tell the story, he also has the team’s logo tattooed on his right arm, and is a published poet.
In the print edition of Forbes magazine, and soon to be published online, revelations about the owner of the Colts seem to defy conventional wisdom of what an NFL owner should be like: [Irsay is] a collector who owns, among other items: guitars from Jerry Garcia and Elvis Presley, Jack Kerouac’s 120-foot-scroll manuscript of On the Road and the glasses worn by Mike Myers in the Austin Powers movies. Irsay sees no difference between owning an NFL franchise and his outside interests. “I believe we’re all artists, that business is art,” he says.
As for the “business is art” statement, a good example may be the recently opened $720 million Lucas Oil Stadium, new home to the Colts. Irsay is getting into the new facility in a deal that will ultimately see the Colts paying 1/7th the cost, and in reality, when you throw in the loan from the NFL through the G4 fund, he’s paying virtually nothing up front. As ownership goes, that’s business art on a Picasso level. “He’s the best small-market owner in the NFL,” says Marc Ganis, president of the Chicago consultancy Sportscorp in the Forbes article. Source: Forbes, Business of Sports Network research
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