What is Frank McCourt's Net Worth?
Frank McCourt is an American business executive and philanthropist who has a net worth of $1.2 billion. Frank McCourt is owns the French Ligue 1 football club Olympique de Marseille. Previously, from 2004 to 2012, he was the owner and chairman of the MLB's Los Angeles Dodgers and Dodger Stadium. Among his other ventures, McCourt founded the international nonprofit Project Liberty, which seeks to build a new internet infrastructure. Frank McCourt is probably most famous for being the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He and his wife at the time Jamie purchased the Dodgers in 2004 for $430 million. Frank and Jamie met as students at Georgetown University in the 1970s then spent thirty years building a real estate and sports empire. She began as a high-powered international and securities lawyer. He got his start developing commercial real estate in Boston. In 2004 the McCourts moved to California with their four sons and bought the Los Angeles Dodgers for $430 million. Jamie became the CEO of the team and Frank got the official "Owner" title. Due to their lack of pre-nup, ownership of the Dodgers became a contentious issue when the couple eventually split. After several acrimonious years, they sold the team for a then-record $2 billion in 2012 to an investment group that included Magic Johnson.
Early Life and Education
Frank McCourt Jr. was born on August 14, 1953 in Boston, Massachusetts to a family involved in real estate and construction. He was raised Catholic. As a young adult, McCourt attended Georgetown University, from which he earned a degree in economics in 1975.
Career Beginnings
McCourt began his career in business in 1977 when he founded his own commercial real estate company. He became a major real estate developer in the Boston area before relocating to Los Angeles. The majority of his Boston real estate holdings were parking lots.
Los Angeles Dodgers
In 2004, McCourt purchased the MLB's Los Angeles Dodgers for around $430 million from Rupert Murdoch's Fox Entertainment Group. He financed the purchase mostly by debt, and used his parking lot property in Boston as collateral. Through the transaction, McCourt acquired substantial real estate assets, including Dodger Stadium and the surrounding parking lot land. To offset the cost of the purchase, he raised ticket and concession prices each year. By 2010, the value of the Dodgers was estimated at around $727 million.
In 2011, McCourt became embroiled in a turbulent ownership dispute over the Dodgers. The dispute stemmed from an LA Times report that revealed McCourt had obtained a personal loan from Fox to cover his team's payroll during the spring, raising concerns about finances. As part of an MLB investigation into the matter, MLB commissioner Bud Selig appointed a representative to oversee the team's daily operations. In effect, Selig's office took control of the Dodgers as a result. In June of 2011, the franchise filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection. Following heavy legal wrangling between McCourt's and the MLB's lawyers, McCourt agreed to put the Dodgers up for sale. He closed the sale in 2012 for a record $2 billion, selling the team to a group consisting of Magic Johnson, Stan Kasten, and Guggenheim Partners.
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Los Angeles Marathon
While he was still owner of the Dodgers, McCourt purchased the operating rights to the Los Angeles Marathon in 2008. He and his group altered the route of the race so that it would commence at Dodger Stadium. In 2010, McCourt's "Stadium to the Sea" course attracted the largest field of runners in the history of the Los Angeles Marathon. At the end of the decade, he announced that he would be donating the Marathon and its parent company Conqur Endurance to the McCourt Foundation, a Boston-based group overseen by his cousin Brian.
Olympique de Marseille
In 2016, McCourt purchased the French Ligue 1 football club Olympique de Marseille from Margarita Louis-Dreyfus for a reported €45 million. He went on to appoint Jacques-Henri Eyraud as the club's president and Rudi Garcia as coach, and to pledge investments of €200 million in the club through 2020.
Project Liberty
McCourt founded the international nonprofit Project Liberty in 2021. Through this initiative, he intends to build a new internet infrastructure utilizing open source code for developers to create social apps and services. Additionally, Project Liberty was involved in the founding of the McCourt Institute at Georgetown University in Washington, DC and the Paris Institute of Political Studies in France. The Institute works to support research into positive uses of technology.
Other Ventures
Among his other ventures, McCourt purchased half of the Global Champions Tour, an annual show jumping event, in 2014. Three years after that, he co-founded the show jumping team the Miami Celtics with his wife.
Jamie McCourt Divorce
Frank McCourt married his first wife, Jamie, in 1979. After 30 years of marriage, the pair went through a messy divorce in 2009 that saw a heated dispute over ownership of the Dodgers. Over the three year divorce battle, the McCourts spent a combined total of $20 million on lawyer fees alone.
Things spun out of control very quickly in Los Angeles, thanks in part to the lack of a pre-nup. Frank further alleged that Jamie never owned the Dodgers. Jamie, the former securities lawyer, disagreed and demanded her job back.
Frank claimed that she cheated on him with a Dodgers employee and charged the franchise for romantic getaways to Israel and France.
At one point Jamie requested a monthly spousal support payment of $487,634 per MONTH. Jamie also demanded free tickets to all NL games, access to team doctors, free autographs upon request, unlimited travel expenses and flowers in her office. In addition to the Dodgers , the couple fought over two homes in the Holmby Hills area of L.A., two beachfront homes in Malibu, an estate on Cape Cod, a home in Massachusetts, a condo in Vail, property at the ritzy Yellowstone Club in Montana and property in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
In 2011, the McCourts reached an agreement on a settlement that was contingent upon the MLB approving a 17-year television contract between the Dodgers and Fox Sports West. However, the settlement fell apart when the MLB rejected the television deal. The McCourts finally reached a settlement in October of 2011 with Jamie receiving around $130 million and ceding her ownership claim of the Dodgers.
In addition to the $130 million, Jamie received half of the couple's roughly 12 real estate properties. Jamie received the mansion in Holmby Hills, two mansions in Malibu, a mansion in Montana and a mansion in Colorado. More on the Holmbs Hills estate in a moment.
In 2015, McCourt remarried to Monica Algarra. Overall, he has six children from his marriages. McCourt has homes in Cotuit and Mashpee, Massachusetts.
Holmby Hills Estate
In 2004, upon moving to Los Angels, Frank and Jamie McCourt paid $21.3 million for two properties in LA's exclusive Holmby Hills neighborhood. One featured a large mansion, the other was an undeveloped lot. The seller was Babyface. They proceeded to spend an additional $14 million on renovations and construction costs on the mansion.
According to their divorce filings, the McCourts were paying $202,000 per month on maintenance alone on the Holmby estate.
Jamie received this estate in their divorce. Jamie sold the two properties in two transactions for a combined total of $72 million. In September 2021, with Snapchat stock at an all-time high of $80 share, Snapchat CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel (and super model wife Miranda Kerr) paid $100 million for the two properties. Fast forward 18 months and Snapchat's stock had fallen 90% to around $10. Maybe the estate is cursed?
