Johnson family wealth must have taken a turn for the worse if they can’t afford players.
Richest individual owner in MLB before Cohen bought the Mets, not including corporate ownership of Braves and Blue Jays, and Dolan, sold the Indians.
Charles Johnson, San Francisco Giants: $5.1 Billion
Owner since: 1993
How much they purchased the team for: $100 million
How much the team is worth: $3.10 billion
In 1947, Rupert Johnson Sr. founded Franklin Templeton Investments, also called Franklin Resources. A decade later, his son, then-24-year-old Charles Johnson, became the company's CEO. He grew the company from $2.5 million in managed assets in 1957 to $800 billion when he retired in 2013. His net worth is estimated at $5.1 billio
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/20-richest-mlb-team-owners-120052482.html
24 comments
Fuck this ownership and their steadfast commitment to mediocrity.
Why own a team if you won’t spend to make it better. The MLB needs to make a rule if a team doesn’t have a winning season in a 5 years spand, the owners have to sell that team. Because it’s obvious they’re not doing enough to win.
As a former A’s fan, I think we can all tell you guys that having a rich owner doesnt guarantee anything, especially in our case 😭
Wishing our once neighbors across the Bay the best.
The more you learn about SF Giants ownership, the more you despise them.
Scared money don’t make money man…
Owning a sports team should be fun, not a fucking financial-real estate investment
Believe Johnson only owns about a 25% stake in the organization, which is somehow the controlling stake.
They are just hoarders and use the Giants as a way to prop up their real estate interests
Becoming the A’s with each passing year. Sell the fucking team.
Giants have dumped a lot of cash into real estate development. Cash flow constraints and holding the team back. Maybe 5+ years and it will even out.
Ironic from Greg “Break Even” Johnson
Is Larry Baer gonna have to slap a bitch?
This isn’t how baseball organizations are financed. No baseball owner spends a significant amount of their personal wealth on variable costs like payroll.
The single biggest source of revenue is broadcast rights. The largest sports broadcast markets are; 1) New York, 2) LA. Who has the most money to spend on payroll 🤔 yeah, New York and LA. The SF/Oakland/SJ Bay Area is 10th.
The second largest source of income is sponsorships, which strangely enough mirrors market size.
Third is ticket sales and merchandise. The Dodgers average 3,800,000 attended a year for the past decade. The Giants peaked at 3,300,000 during their World Series run.
Payrolls aside, the Dodgers have consistently had one of the best player development systems in baseball. For all the big money free agents they buy, the core has always been home grown. The Giants are historically mediocre at drafting and development.
The Giants woes are not about ownership not spending their own money on payroll.
You can be frustrated about the Imai article but come on, people are in this thread comparing the Giants to the fucking A’s when this team had the 9th highest payroll in baseball in 2025. Completely out of touch with reality.
As much as I dislike Johnson, I hate this continued fantasy people have that owners are going to continuously dip into their own personal pockets to pay players. The only guy who has publicly said he will spend his own money in huge numbers is Cohen. Long term, that’s not really the best strategy.
Player salaries are paid through team revenues. In 2024, we had approximately $533M in revenues but only generated $65M in EBITDA against that.
For comparison, the Dodgers had $701M in revenue and about $10M in EBITDA and the Mets has $466M in revenue and -$277M in EBITDA. [(Source)](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/11/cnbcs-official-mlb-team-valuations-2025.html)
If you don’t know what EBITDA is, its Earning Before Interest Tax, Depreciation, and Amortization. It’s a financial metric that measures a company’s operating profitability by showing how much a business earns from its core operations before accounting for interest expenses, taxes, and non-cash expenses like depreciation and amortization. For simplicity, just refer to it as profit. So the Dodgers had $168M more in revenue alone before considering they spent $270M in payroll or $70M more than the Giants. The Mets brought in less money than the Giant by $67M and overspent to the point the lost $277M, so Cohen dipped into his pocket for $277M just to keep the team operational in 2024. Do you really think he is going to continuously drain his own pocket for $250M annually? Who really thinks this is a wise way to run a business?
If we want a more competitive landscape, then I would suggest a couple things happen:
1. They need to enact a hard cap to ensure talent gets spread around the league better.
2. International players should be required to either enter the draft or there should be an allocation order that ensures players get spread around the league instead of constantly going to the highest bidder. The League can come in a set the salary limits and lengths (think of it like NFL rookie contract, so 4 years $75M max for example) after which point they become URFA and can sign anywhere.
3. Expand team rosters from 26 to 30 to help with roster creation.
Where are you getting the 800 billion when he retired in 2013 from? That would make him the richest person in the history of the world at that point. He didn’t have that much, ever. Elon is worth 500 billion. Charles Johnson never even had that much.
Bringing in Buster, Bringing back Bochy, Chapman, Adames, and now Devers…. And cutting Melvin all show signs of willing to spend. So things are looking up
The circumstances leading to Johnson becoming majority owner, forcing out Bill Neukom (RIP), was because Neukom wanted to take the profits from the World Series win and invest in the team.
Johnson wanted to distribute the profits amongst the owners. Doesn’t matter how rich he is. He’s never going to be one of those owners willing to buy a championship.
What I don’t understand is: when some dork wants positive attention from people who wouldn’t otherwise bother with him, he pays up for that. A nearby example — college sports. Billionaires shell out to be at the center of the party. Giants owners want glow in the community, but that’s also supposed to make them wealthier? Nobody cares about their SAAS or their asset management firm. Wish they’d stuck to generating return from things nobody cares about and stayed away from a game people love.
SF has been a higher spending team for the past few years that didn’t spend on players as wisely as others, I hope that changes
Just because the owners are rich doesn’t mean we should expect them to run an operating loss. They could maybe run a smaller margin, but seriously we aren’t a charity.
>Johnson family wealth must have taken a turn for the worse if they can’t afford players.
Charles Johnson owns 25% of the Giants.
The Giants owe over $600 million in payroll to just Lee, Chapman, Adames and Devers. They paid a payroll luxury tax penalty just last year. In no rational way can the team be described as cheap.
I caddied for Charles Johnson and his son over 50 times while I looped at Cypress Point GC (2001-2207). So I spent roughly 200+ hours with Mr Johnson.
A few takeaways – he tipped me quite well –
he sucked at golf –
he is not interested in what people think – He is 1000% about the bottom line. Same with his son. I listened to all of their shop talk
Oh and I almost forgot . . . very racist . .
Wish the SF Giants and the 49ers where publicly traded. I would love to be an investor in these legendary sports teams! 🙂
The pocket 53% of the revenue while winning teams pocket 27-35%