How Did Jeffrey Lurie Earn The Money To Buy The Super Bowl-Bound Philadelphia Eagles?

Most sports fans tend to have the same dream at some point in their lives. We all wish that someday we could own our favorite team. How cool would it be to own an NFL franchise and get to call the shots, enjoy all the perks, and get great seats at every game? However, if we can't own our favorite team, we would probably be okay with buying another, right? That's pretty much what happened to Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie.

Born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, he grew up a Red Sox and Patriots fan. So when the Patriots went up for sale in 1993, he tried to buy the team, but his uncle shut the deal down when the bidding reached $150 million.

Lurie also tried to buy the Rams and toyed with the idea of being a part of the team to bid for the Baltimore expansion team. Lurie was determined to buy an NFL franchise and that finally happened in May 1994 when he bought the Philadelphia Eagles for $195 million. But how did he have that much money in the first place???

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How Jeffrey Lurie Earned His Fortune

So, how did Jeffrey Lurie happen to have $195 million he could spend on a professional sports franchise?

Well, he did it the old-fashioned way. He borrowed $190 million from a bank using stock owned in a family business as collateral. He actually used both his own shares and his mother's shares as collateral. Thanks, mom!

Lurie's grandfather, Phillip Smith, founded the General Cinemas movie theater chain back in 1935. At one point, it was the largest operator of drive-in movie theaters in the United States.

In the 1960s, General Cinemas began buying up Pepsi bottling operations. Today, General Cinemas is known as Harcourt General, Inc., a $4 billion multi-unit conglomerate that employs more than 24,000 people worldwide. The conglomerate owns several publishing houses, insurance companies and even clothing companies.

Lurie didn't jump right into the family business at first. He actually became a professor after earning his PhD in social policy. In 1983, he quit teaching and joined the family business, which was headed by his Uncle Richard.

He attempted to go out on his own and founded a production company, Chestnut Hill Productions, in 1985. In 2011, the company won an Academy Award for the documentary, "Inside Job," but other than that, their most memorable production was the 1991 Kathleen Turner movie, "V.I. Warshawski."

And as for his $195 million investment in an NFL team? Today, the Eagles are worth $8 billion! And thanks to his majority ownership stake in the team and his stock in the family company, Jeffrey's net worth is $5 billion.