It Could Happen Here Weekly 247

**Robert Evans** (0:03)
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know, this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

**Kevin Foster** (0:29)
Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Kevin Foster and for the past few months, I witnessed what I would describe as an egregious billionaire handout going down in the city of Portland and the state of Oregon as a whole. You might feel nauseous thinking about your tax dollars going to some wealthy bastard, and trust me, he is a bastard. But what if I told you it was for basketball? That probably sounds silly to many of you, but that's the question Portlanders have been grappling with. Tom Dundon, a Texas billionaire businessman, bought the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers in April of this year. You may or may not have heard of Dundon. He made the rounds not too long ago when the other sports team he owns, the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes, won the Stanley Cup. Notably, he engraved his dog's name on it to the distaste of many hockey fans. Since Dundon took over the Blazers, he's fueled constant chatter about the possibility of moving the team out of Portland. He's done so by demanding the city, county and state hand over approximately $600 million in public funds to renovate the Moda Center, the Blazers Stadium, which our wonderful producer Sophie has informed me is already quite nice. Despite Forbes estimating Dundon's net worth at around $2.3 billion, he has no plans of contributing the renovation himself, leaving it all to the taxpayers.
There's a very dedicated Blazers community here in town, so the threats of leaving rang major alarm bells. But what has ensued is a revealing cascade of insights into local corruption, economic desperation, and a deep misunderstanding and or willful ignorance of sports economics.
So today we're going to talk about the economics of sports and stadiums, why these investments are awful for your city to make, and what to watch out for as the business lobby and politicians in your town try to line the pockets of billionaires. While they will talk a lot about Portland, I want to be clear, a great deal of this could very easily spread across the country, as Dundon sets a new precedent for what executives can scrape from taxpayers. On that note, I'd like to do a mini-dive into Tom Dundon and some of his co-owners to give you a sense of the types of people we're dealing with here. A mini behind the bastards, if you will. For one, Dundon is a known penny-pincher, in other words, a piece of shit. Some of his cost-cutting measures just since taking over the Blazers include massive layoffs of up to 70 Blazers staff, leaving part-time players at home in Portland in the middle of the playoffs, breaking playoff tradition by not giving fans free t-shirts, ignoring players' coaching requests, and undercutting the pay of the coach he did end up hiring. And it gets worse. Dundon made most of his money in the subprime auto loan industry with the company Santander Consumer USA. According to Boston University Finance Professor Mark Williams, as referenced in an Oregon Public Broadcasting article, Dundon was, quote, one of the individuals that really grew the industry. Many would argue he took it to a new level, unquote. According to the New York Times, part of how Dundon and other Santander executives made millions was by packaging risky loans for low-income people into securities that could be sold, a la the 2008 financial crisis and what Wall Street ghouls did with mortgages. The various malpractices which Santander never had to admit to in court resulted in $550 million worth of legal settlements, including in Oregon. If you're waiting for some sort of karmic relief, it isn't really coming. Dundon walked away from Santander in 2015 with $700 million.
He then continued to invest in subprime auto lenders while expanding into professional sports.
This man is not well liked, even by people who are clearly desperate to keep the Blazers here. For example, in a recent city council meeting, one fan who was in support of a public subsidy for the Blazers, called Dundon a, quote, grade A douchebag, unquote.
In order to buy the Blazers, Dundon had to put together an ownership group. One lesser reported individual in that group is Mark Zahr, the co-president of the shadow bank, Blue Owl Capital. On their website, Blue Owl calls themselves a, quote, partner to hyperscalers, unquote, in the AI data center space. According to Bloomberg, they also sold a warehouse to DHS for an ICE mega prison for $120 million.