Prediction Open · timeframe Nov 2031
Boehly predicted in 2021 that all states will allow sports gambling
“Is obviously not all the states allow gambling yet, but I think in 10 years time, that will be the case.”
Disclosure
Boehly: Team advised selling Enron bonds at 90 cents before collapse
“And at the time the Enron bonds were trading right around 88, 90 cents on the dollar, depending on the bond. And we basically made the recommendation to sell the Enron debt, and the CEO of Salmon's at the time said, you guys are wrong.”
Disclosure
Boehly: Dodgers' $2B valuation was justified by investment-grade media rights
“And ultimately, we came to a conclusion that we were very able to pay two billion dollars, because those media rights were effectively an investment grade bond, because you're going to get the offtake from an example, CBS, Fox, Time Warner, all of those partie…”
Disclosure
Boehly: Eldridge avoids investing in China without local presence and edge
“And if you don't have a real local presence, it's why, you know, anyone has said, well, why don't you go buy into China right now? China's depressed, or China's stock prices are down. And it's just like, I don't have any edge. And if I don't have an edge, then…”
Insight
Boehly: CLOs, CBOs, and CDOs are essentially limited-life banks
“And to me, a CLO or a CBO or a CDO Is really a bank with a limited life.”
Insight
Boehly: Lending offers a lower-risk look at businesses than equity
“When you're lending money, it's almost like dating. You can break up easily when you get paid off, but you also have a front row seat to understanding businesses, industries, management teams in a lower risk way than if you're at the bottom of the capital stru…”
Assertion Partly supported
Boehly: Freescale buyout introduced covenant-lite debt at seven times leverage
“I remember seeing Freescale get bought out, and that was a big acquisition that was done with a lot of debt, and that was the first time Covenant Lite debt started really creeping into the market. And I think the free scale debt was LIBOR plus two 25, and it w…”
Insight
Boehly: Start businesses when asset prices are high, buy when low
“And to me, starting businesses from scratch, growing them on the ground floor, when prices are really high, it's cheaper to start a business. And from prices are less high, it might be cheaper and less timely to buy a business. So you have to continuously be l…”
Disclosure
Boehly: Eldridge provided financing to assist ARK Invest's equity buyout
“We helped ARK buy out their equity, so we have a financing relationship with ARK.”
Insight
Boehly: Media rights defaults allow immediate resale without foreclosure delays
“And what I always love about media rights, if you don't get paid, you don't have to foreclose. You just take your rights back and you go distribute them again and you have to worry about the noise over here. But if you're lending money to a company and you don…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Boehly: Sports broadcasting will shift entirely direct-to-consumer
“And ultimately, it's going to be direct to consumer, because there's no reason to go through MVPDs in order to get to your customer.”
Disclosure
Boehly: Eldridge operates without investment committees or closed-end fund structures
“Not investing out of funds, and we don't have investment committees, and we don't have complexity.”
Disclosure
Boehly requires preferred equity when deal counterparties retain operating control
“And I don't need control as long as I have structural seniority. So I tell everyone, if you want control, all I want is then a preferred. If I have control, then I don't need a preferred, but I don't want to give someone else control and not have structural pr…”
Disclosure
Boehly: Eldridge's model avoids selling winning assets to prove returns
“Our model is such that as long as it's compounding and growing, I don't need to sell my winners in order to prove a point.”
Insight
Boehly: Film risk is eliminated by pre-selling international distribution rights
“Well, the way we started making movies was we would sell off the Foreign rights market by market. So you could go to Germany and you could get a million dollars for Germany and you can get two million for the UK. So if we sold the rights, we knew we could get …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Boehly: Eldridge generated over $1 billion in earnings in 2020
“Last year we made over a billion dollars.”
Insight
Boehly: Evaluate a business's underlying value before its capital structure
“I really get frustrated when people talk about capitalization and cap structure before they talk about the business, right? I really want to understand the business. I want to understand why it's valuable. I want to understand why it's going to continue to be …”
Opinion
Boehly: J.H. Whitney operated like Blackstone before Blackstone achieved scale
“I think we were Blackstone before Blackstone became Blackstone. We had private equity, we had hedge funds, we had credit, we had private mezzanine debt, so we had the asset classes covered, and I think we were there in a really interesting time.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Boehly: J.H. Whitney turned a $2M Kana investment into $170M
“They started at a mid-market buyout shop, and remember they made that investment in Kana Communications, and they put two million dollars into Kana and it became a 170.”
Disclosure
Boehly and Mark Walter restructured $1.3B in distressed Guggenheim CBOs
“So basically we turned three CBOs that represented about a 1,000,000,003 Into trading vehicles that were financed with low cost debt.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Boehly: Guggenheim bought senior bank debt at 50 cents in 2008
“We ended up buying senior bank debt at 50, 60 cents on the dollar, and literally within Four months, it was back at 85, 90 cents on the dollar.”
Assertion Supported
Boehly: Eldridge launched by acquiring media and real estate assets from Guggenheim
“But that gave me the opportunity to acquire the media assets, to acquire the real estate businesses, all the stuff that I had been building at Guggenheim that was in its infancy, frankly, because that was not what they wanted and I understood it.”
Assertion Supported
Boehly: Eldridge tested Replay Technologies at Dodger Stadium before Intel sale
“The very first tech investment we made was something called replay technologies. And replay technologies, it's, if you watch home plate, or if you watch the basketball, or if you watch now football, and they give you 360 degree views, that was a technology tha…”
Todd Boehly