Walmart Heir Leads Group To Buy Denver Broncos 

A group led by Rob Walton, the son of Walmart Inc. founder Sam Walton, agreed to buy the National Football League’s Denver Broncos for an amount that’s likely to be the highest ever paid for a US professional sports team.

Walton’s group includes his daughter Carrie and her husband, Greg Penner, along with Mellody Hobson, co-chief executive officer of Ariel Investments, the two sides said in a joint statement Tuesday. They didn’t disclose terms for the deal, which needs approval from the NFL’s finance committee and league ownership. The offer was worth $4.65 billion, ESPN reported, citing NFL sources it didn’t identify.

Walton, 77, was an early frontrunner in a crowded field of contenders vying for the first NFL team to go up for sale in four years, which included billionaires Josh Harris, co-founder of Apollo Global Management Inc., and mortgage mogul Mat Ishbia. But the former Walmart chairman has vastly more money to deploy: He’s the 17th-richest person in the world with a net worth of $58.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Hobson joins the group at a time of increased focus on the lack of representation among owners in the 102-year-old National Football League, where 7 out of 10 players are Black, yet no Black person has ever held a majority stake in a team.