Newport Beach’s Jeff Moorad is looking to bring some elements of “Moneyball” to Europe.
A former general partner and CEO of the Arizona Diamondbacks and vice-chair and CEO of the San Diego Padres, Moorad recently bought Portuguese soccer club Estoril Praia Futebol SAD, a team in the second division of that country’s soccer league.
The 80-year-old club from Lisbon placed third in the league last season; it just kicked off its latest season.
Moorad’s newly-formed MSP Sports Capital, which bought the club, echoed some elements of famed A’s GM Billy Beane (now also a minority owner in an English club) by saying it will be “implementing technology and data science into the ethos of Estoril Praia to help develop the star players of tomorrow.”
“The goal is to build a European player development platform and create value from the synergies, both on operations as well as the sporting side,” said Moorad, who adds that a second deal in Spain is forthcoming.
Moorad’s spreading the love of the Beautiful Game domestically, too. He serves as chair of the global sports division for law firm Morgan Lewis; that group, with a Costa Mesa office, recently helped Houston Rockets star James Harden buy a minority stake in Houston Dynamo, the MLS club from that city.
Moorad’s not the only local exec to take a stab at European soccer ownership of late. In 2015, Toba Capital’s Vinny Smith, estimated to have a fortune in the $2.4 billion range, bought Croatian club NK Istra 1961.
It appears to have been a short-term deal; news reports out of Europe last year said another group took over ownership of the club.
Smith, an action-sports fan who got to the University of Delaware on a wrestling scholarship, tells our Peter J. Brennan he’s doing well after a recent back procedure. If the downtime gives the head of OC’s largest VC more opportunity to eye investments, or just a good ice pack, we’d point to Hyperice, a maker of sports-recovery devices (see our page 1 story, and this week’s Innovator of the Year supplement for other notable firms).
BlizzCon aside, San Diego has bested Anaheim as a hub for larger sci-fi/comic book/gaming-type convention events recently. But Anaheim was able to sneak in some propaganda for itself at the recent San Diego Comic-Con event, said to bring in more than 160,000 attendees annually.
The first trailer for a new “Star Trek” television series, called Picard, debuted at the event. Eagle-eyed viewers might note that one setting in the clip, apparently portraying a futuristic Starfleet headquarters, was the outside of the Anaheim Convention Center.
See page 57 for this week’s Meetings & Conventions special report.
Feeling Blue? For the first time, Ds top Rs among registered voters in OC, new data shows. Democrats count 547,458 registered voters, the GOP has 547,369. No-party preference voters stood at 449,711 as of last week; it’s the fastest-growing group of the three.
