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Last year, former Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson was one in a long line of men with loads of money who were pushed out of a position for power for being shitty people, which created a golden opportunity for someone else with loads of money to take on a new hobby in the form of owning an NFL team. Plenty of names were thrown around after he announced his resignation, but there was one that particularly stood out: The Artist Currently Known As Diddy.
Diddy kicked off his campaign to become an NFL owner who isn’t an old white dude almost immediately after Richardson stepped down and he quickly lobbied other high-profile people to join him in his quest. He reportedly met with a number of investors and managed to attract the interest of Steph Curry in addition to Colin Kaepernick, who Diddy said he would sign if he took control of the Panthers.
However, there was always one small hurdle in Diddy’s path: the fact that the team is reportedly worth upwards of $2.8 billion. While he might be the second-wealthiest hip-hop artist in the world, he’d still have to dig up a couple of billion dollars to supplement his current net worth, and it looks like he might have run out of time.
According to WBNG, David Tepper— who currently owns a stake in the Pittsburgh Steelers and has a slightly larger net worth of $11 billion — is the favorite to buy the Panthers, with an official announcement coming as soon as today. The deal is reportedly worth between $2.1-2.5 billion, which— if you put it in a perspective that I now realize isn’t really that helpful now that I’ve looked it up— is around the same as the GDP of Bhutan.
At least Diddy has plenty of Ciroc to drown his sorrows.