Former Dodgers Owner Frank McCourt’s Latest Takeover Bid: TikTok
Dodger fans remember Frank McCourt as the despised owner who drove the team into bankruptcy, stole from the team’s charity foundation, and spent more lavishly on himself than the team while his marriage (to the team’s co-owner) crumbled.
Guess who wants to buy TikTok?
McCourt’s vision for the popular social media platform sounds like a digital utopia. In an interview with Semafor.com, McCourt said, he plans to buy and rebuild TikTok as “a new and better version of the internet where individuals are respected and they own and control their identity and their data.”
TikTok presents the best and worst of the internet. It connects 170 million people and allows them to be creative and build things and enjoy things and do things,” he said. “On the other hand, they don’t get to really share in the value that’s created, and their data is scraped and stolen and shipped to China.
— Former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, via Semafor.com
McCourt is now the executive chairman of his family’s real estate firm, McCourt Global, and the founder of the tech and innovation initiative Project Liberty. He’ll only be able to bid on TikTok if its current owner, the China-based ByteDance, agrees to sell in the face of a possible ban imposed by the U.S. government.
According to the Associated Press, former Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin has also expressed a desire to buy TikTok.
McCourt said Guggenheim Securities is advising him on the bid and will provide financing. According to the Los Angeles Times,
Guggenheim Securities bills itself as “the investment banking and capital markets business of Guggenheim Partners.” The chief executive officer of Guggenheim Partners: Mark Walter, the chairman of Guggenheim Baseball, the owner of the Dodgers and co-owner — with McCourt — of the Dodger Stadium parking lots.
— via the Los Angeles Times
Photo Credit: Kirby Lee/Image of Sport-USA TODAY Sports
Have you subscribed to our YouTube channel? Subscribe and hit that notification bell to stay up to date on all the latest Dodgers news, rumors, interviews, livestreams, and more!
