Houston Texans: Bob McNair increases ranking on USA richest owners list

Although the success of the Houston Texans financially didn’t quite translate to the field this past season, the franchise as well as the owner remain one of the most valuable in sports today. Both the value of the team as well as Bob McNair increased year-over-year. How much?

The Houston Texans financial success has been a boon for not only the city but those that have a stake in as well. Having sold out every consecutive game since the franchise’s inception back in 2002, it still remains one of the highly-regarded success stories in terms of their balance sheet.

Although the team actually winning games has been recent as of late, there was a long time where finishing 6-10, 5-11 even 2-14 were the norm up until about 2011. You know what? It didn’t matter because this is a football state and it’s certainly a dose of our daily diet. I’m old enough to remember what things were like during those five years we didn’t have a football team from 1997-02.

Bud Adams didn’t get what he wanted in a new playpen for his cash cow and at the time fans were perfectly okay with him packing up and leaving. I honestly feel things could’ve been handled differently but I’m not sure if it would’ve been his character.

But energy magnate Bob McNair swooped in and dropped a cool $700 million fee back in 1999 to provide the foundation for the Texans, an investment that has proved fruitful throughout his ownership tenure. As per Forbes, the Houston Texans are currently worth $2.8 billion, an eight percent increase over their 2016 valuation of about $2.6 billion, an approximate $224 million increase in value.

But how about Bob McNair? He’s currently worth $3.8 billion, which is up from $3.5 billion, a $300 million increase and about a 7.9 percent increase in personal wealth. One can make an inference that his success is directly tied to the healthy balance sheet of the Houston Texans as his growth is right at the pace of the franchise. He’s currently No. 21 on a list of 43 owners and is tied with Arthur Blank, owner of the Atlanta Falcons/Atlanta United and Henry Samueli (Anaheim Ducks). Tom Gores (Detroit Pistons) trails McNair slightly but just by $100 million with a value of $3.7 billion

There’s nothing wrong with that but it’s just important to point that out. And you know, it’s

More from House of Houston

remarkable because of especially what the NFL went through this season involving a myriad of protests during the national anthem. Although this is something I support, there are many that don’t agree with what was done and a lot of them hold the money that goes into the team’s coffers.

The Texans did participate in the protest but all were locked-in-arms in terms of unity with none kneeling during the national anthem causing the team to survive the storm of controversy. McNair even weathered the comments he made about not letting the “inmates running the prison” after giving his take on the whole situation of freedom of speech at the NFL owner’s meetings earlier this past season.

McNair quickly worked to absolve himself of that quote by apologizing and indicating that his polarizing words were taken out of context.

The point is that fans love football and despite those sequence of events made many feel uncomfortable, the headline-grabbing, ratings-gobbler in what is the NFL continues to reign supreme.

Next: The pecularity of J.J. Watt's Hurricane Harvey fundraising

McNair’s legacy will always be tied to the notion of the man who brought football back to Houston for good because with the rising ascent of the team’s value, that’s all sewn up.

Go Texans.

Home/Houston Texans