Snoop Dogg joins group looking to buy NHL’s Ottawa Senators
Rapper, actor, record producer, Grammy Award winner, NHL owner?
That’s right, Snoop Dogg is looking to become the next A-list celebrity to have an ownership stake in a professional sports franchise after he announced he was joining forces with Los Angeles-based entrepreneur Neko Sparks in a bid to buy the Ottawa Senators.
The Athletic reported that Snoop Dogg will be one of a dozen investors in Sparks’s group, consisting mostly of people of color. Sparks would be the first Black owner in NHL history.
Snoop’s popularity — he has more than 100 million combined followers on social media (80.1 million on Instagram, 20.9 million on Twitter) — would no doubt be a feather in the cap of Sparks’s group should it win the bid. He reportedly would appear at some Senators home games and join TSN in the broadcast booth if that were to happen.
The Senators' sale price is expected to top $1 billion, which would be a new NHL record, and final bids are due May 15. As many as seven groups are reportedly in the running. Sportico values the Senators at $655 million, making them the 27th-most valuable franchise in the league.
The Remington Group, in which actor Ryan Reynolds has invested, is another high-profile collective bidding on the Senators.
The Winnipeg Jets in 2011 were the last Canadian hockey team to be sold.
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