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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher/Writer
It’s official: Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley has added AFC Bournemouth of the Premier League to his diverse business portfolio. Foley’s Black Knight Football Club purchased the team from Maxim Demin. Foley will serve as managing general partner with other investors of the VGK team.
Hollywood actor Michael B. Jordan is also a part-owner of AFC Bournemouth.
It’s been reported that the sale price was $148 million. Here’s the official confirmation from AFC Bournemouth:
Only two months ago, LVSportsBiz.com reported on Foley attending that Bournemouth game and meeting fans of the team.
So, today’s news was simply an official confirmation on what people knew for two months now. Even the Golden Knights’ coach, Bruce Cassidy, was wearing the Bournemouth scarf for a VGK pregame video update.
Foley has acquired a Bournemouth club that has a reputation for being a scrappy, underdog team owned by a variety of owners through the years. The team has dealt with financial and even near-bankruptcy issues over time, but has worked hard to move from the bottom of the forth tier to the Premier League.
Foley, the self-confessed “serial deal maker” who has purchased a home there and plans to attend the team’s next home game on Dec. 31, plans to invest in improving AFC Bournemouth’s stadium plus build a new training center. Here’s more info from the AFC Bournemouth statement:
Foley wrote this letter to Bournemouth fans. Here’s the top of it:
Foley is hardly new at building sports facilities, He opened the Golden Knights’ City National Arena as a team headquarters and training center in the Summerlin section of metro Las Vegas in 2017.
In 2021, he also opened a new 6,000-seat arena in Henderson, where Foley also constructed a community ice center that’s similar to City National Arena to grow hockey in the Las Vegas market.
Foley often cross-promotes his various properties, which include wineries, hotels, restaurants and sports teams that play in The Dollar Loan Center arena in Henderson. Foley owns the Henderson Silver Knights minor league hockey team and the Vegas Knight Hawks of the Indoor Football League — tenants of the DLC venue.
Lewis Coombes, sports editor of BBC South News, told LVSportsBiz.com today that “fans (are) very positive and surprised to see Michael B Jordan’s involvement.”